
Class I^K^OBT 
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CDJEMRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



POEMS 



POEMS 



BY 



CECIL ROBERTS 



WITH A PREFACE BY 

JOHN MASEFIELD 



.msmm^' 




NEW YORK 

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 






Copyright, 1920, hy 
Frederick A. Stokes Company 



All rights reserved 



JAN \l 1920 



©C;!.A561393 



<3> 

9 



PREFACE 

Mr. Cecil Roberts has published several vol- 
umes of poems, each better than the last; The 
Youth of Beauty, Twenty-six Poems, and Charing 
Cross. Many of the poems in these volumes 
must already be known in America, where poetry 
is more eagerly read, perhaps, than in any other 
country in the world. I have been asked to write 
a few words in preface to the present volume, of 
his latest poems. 

If I may say so, without offence, Mr. Roberts 
Is a little like the Mysterious Stranger in a novel. 
One says of him (as the Count in the novel says), 
*' He knows more of the French King than any 
man I ever met; yet who is he?" In conver- 
sation with him, I understood him to say that he 
is fifty-four years old. In conversation with a 
friend of his, I was told that he is twenty-five 
years old. For my own part, I should have said 
that he is somewhere between those two ages; 
yet it is difficult to be sure. When I think of the 
Mr. Roberts of real life, a very well-informed, 

[v] 



PREFACE 

llberally-mlnded, experienced journalist and war 
correspondent, who has seen much and many of 
the naval, military, and political doings and per- 
sons of the last five years, I say, with Mr. Justice 
Shallow, " He is old, he cannot -choose but be 
old." When I think of the poems, I feel that he 
must be young; not young enough perhaps to have 
been carried away, or destroyed, by the recent 
great events, but young enough to see them clearly, 
to respond to them, and to realize that the tragedy 
of them has been the tragedy of the young, the 
blasting of the young, for the benefit and at the 

• 

bidding of the old. That, in the main, has been 
the tragedy of the last two years. That, In the 
main, is the tragedy of Mr. Roberts' latest and 
best poems, in the volume here printed. For the 
first two years of the war the youth of the world 
died for their ideals. Mr. Roberts' best poems 
are inspired by the fear that since then the Ideals 
may be dead with the youths, and that, if they 
are: 

*' There isi a question to be asked, 
There is an answer to be given." 

Of all the strange and terrible months which 
men have lived through, the last months of this 

[vi] 



PREFACE 

war must have been the strangest and most ter- 
rible. Mr. Roberts does not describe them, no 
one could do that, but, like the watchers of the 
fight at Syracuse, he makes exclamations, from 
which one may judge of the conflict. There is 
no better indication of London during the war 
than his poem Charing Cross, after that old rail- 
way station, from which so many of the splendid 
started, and to which so many of the maimed 
returned. People who read the poem, years 
hence, will realize from it, how the war seemed 
to us, when a thousand, or two thousand, or 
twenty thousand wounded men passed into Lon- 
don in a night, as Mr. Roberts describes, in a 
" slow processional of pain," as " human refuse 
left by extravagant war." 

In other poems, Mr. Roberts shows us unfor- 
gettably some moments of that now dead world 
of the last year of the war. He has poems on 
his friends: ** Death has claimed their swift young 
lives," and another, bitter and intense, on the 
same theme, 

*' What will they care ten years hence for your 

name. 
Who cares a damn who died at Salamis? " 

[vii] 



PREFACE 

and another, equally forceful, on some politicians. 
But the war ended before the absinthe of the 
politician could complete the ruin which the brandy 
of the soldier began. Mr. Roberts is now ready 
with a matured art to write of the better world 
which the heart of man will surely try to make 
out of the wreck of the old. He is young enough 
to be stirred by the making of that world. He 
has a quick eye for characters, a lively sense of 
rhythm, and a fondness for people, which should 
make his future work as remarkable as his pres- 
ent promise. 

John Masefield. 

Boar's Hill, 
Oxford. 



[viii] 



CONTENTS 

POEMS PAGE 

Springtime in Cookham Dean i 

Winter and Spring 5 

Love that Waited 7 

Remembrance 9 

The Enchanted Wood 12 

Phyllistraton . . . ; 14 

Moonlight Sonata 38 

To a Lady 40 

Joy 41 

Memories 42 

Strayed Hylas 45 

On the Severn 56 

To A Lady Who Painted My Portrait 58 

Clifton Church 60 

After Vacation 67 

Habberley Valley 69 

She Moves, the Lady of My Love 75 

Appassionata 78 

Love's Silence 82 

La Gloriosa Donna 84 

Andromache 87 

Tribute 95 

In the Wood 98 

A Child's Eyes 100 

THE DARK YEARS 

Charing Cross m 

Eclipse 114 

Futility 115 

The Days of Old 117 

The Return 119 

Inheritance 120 

[Ix] 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Deliverer i2i 

On Some Politicians of the Period 122 

Liberty Imperilled 123 

Dawn 124 

I Will Arise 125 

LusiTANiA 130 

Watchmen of the Night 132 

The Dover Patrol 135 

Lines on a Portrait of a Midshipman Killed in Action . 137 

Vigil 139 

A Naval Nursery Rhyme 141 

The Airmen 142 

Prayer for the Pilot 143 

The Neutral Zone 144 

Life 145 

Thoughts in Spring, 191 6, While Europe Was at War . 146 

Millennium 153 

OTHER POEMS 

Helen of Troy 157 

The Moon a Lovely Maiden Is 161 

To Marjory: In Springtime 163 

The Youth of Beauty 167 

A Dead Poet 174 

On Vivisection 177 

Absence 178 

The Courtesan 183 

Ballad of Admiral Blake 185 

The Great Ships 190 

The House on a Hill 192 

The Valley 3(94 

Exile 196 

Habberley Valley Revisited 199 

A Garden at Rydal 205 

A Boy's Laughter 209 

To Peter 216 

To Richard Le Gallienne 218 

To A Climber 220 

To Noble Women l 222 

To A Young Poet 223 

The Portrait 227 



[x] 



POEMS 



SPRINGTIME IN COOKHAM DEAN 

HOW marvellous and fair a thing 
It is to see an English spring, 
He cannot know who has not seen 
The cherry trees at Cookham Dean, 
Who has not seen the blossom lie 
Like snowdrifts 'gainst a cloudless sky 
And found the beauty of the way 
Through woodlands odorous with may; 
It is a rare, a holy sight 
To see the hills with blossom white, 
To feel the air about one flowing 
With the silent rapture growing 
In the hidden heart of things 
That yearn, that flower, put forth wings 
And show their splendours one by one 
Beneath the all-rejoicing sun. 

Perhaps the joy of all the earth 
Moved through us on that day of mirth 
, When in the morning air we trod 
Hills sacred to the woodland god, 

[i] 



SPRINGTLME IN COOKHAM DEAN 

And heard behind us as we ran 
. The laughter of a hidden Pan, 
Who dropped his flute because he heard 
The artless cadence of a bird; 
And we, who love the southern sky, 
One moment ceased to wonder why 
A poet in his exile cried 
To see an English spring, and sighed 
Because a chaffinch from the bough 
Sings and shakes the blossom now. 
For who would sigh for southern skies 
Who once had seen the paradise 
Of this new Eden where the fxowers 
Drench the woods with odorous showers. 
And give delight till the sense sickens 
With the rapture that it quickens? 
This heaven where petals fall as stars, 
This paradise where beauty bars 
Its petalled, white, inviolable portals 
'Gainst the clamouring of mortals. 
And from green altars in dim shrines 
Calls to the driven soul that pines 
For leafy sohtude, and prayer 
That whispers through the branches there. 

[2] 



SPRINGTIME IN COOKHAM DEAN 

When Spring, in her ascension, fills 
The chalice of the sacred hills 
With blossoms like the driven snow, 
And longing takes the heart, then go 
On pilgrimage to Cookham Dean 
And through dim aisles of shadowed green. 
Diapered with the light that trembles 
Round each tree till It resembles 
A maiden letting fall her hair 
In cataracts of gold — draw near 
The secret that brings Englishmen, 
Faithful through exile, home again, 
And watch the wonder of the morn 
And hear the lark with wings upborne 
Into the cloudless empyrean 
Pour his lucent, quenchless pean, 
Or feel the quickened senses start 
In rapture at the artless art 
Of orchards all in blossom showing 
Against the blue of heaven glowing 
Through Its depths of luminous light; 
Then from the windy woodland height 
Through dim ravines where tall trees wait 
For day's decline to gild their state 

[3] 



SPRINGTIME IN COOKHAM DEAN 

And thrill them with caressing fingers 
Of the sun-god whose touch lingers 
Upon their limbs — by paths that wind 
Into the valley go, — and find 
The village by the water's edge 
And listen to the rustling sedge 
That by the churchyard whispers; go — 
And tread the woodland paths I know 
For whosoever has not seen 
The cherry trees at Cookham Dean, 
Who has not roamed Its hills and found 
Delight in that enchanted ground, 
He cannot know, he cannot tell 
Where Spring performs her miracle. 



[4] 



WINTER AND SPRING 

I COULD not know how dear you are 
Till you were gone, 
Or that the days would seem so far, 

Or one by one 
The hours would pass so slow until 

You came again 
To feed my hungry gaze, and still 
The heart in pain. 

I did not know that I could find 

One soul so dear. 
Or that my arms could e'er enfold 

Such love and fear, 
A love that gives itself entire, 

Receiving more, 
A fear that sets my heart afire 

With Love's strange lore. 

How could I know your eyes would find 
The soul in me. 
With misery, 

[5] 



WINTER AND SPRING 

Too long embittered, lone and blind 
I had not thought that lips could kiss 

All pain away, 
And wretchedness be changed to bliss, 

And Night to Day. 

O more than human love that speaks, 

Discarding words, 
Yet holds such meaning as one seeks 

And finds in birds' 
First songs of Spring while boughs are bare, 

I feel anew 
My heart burst forth with blossoms rare, 

Because of you. 



[6] 



LOVE THAT WAITED 

1 LOVED you when, a boy, 
I thought you half divine, 
And dreamed of coming joy 
When you were mine : 
I loved you for the grace 
Crowning you when you moved,- 
Your laughter, lips and face, 
All these I loved. 

And when a youth, I longed 
To know you were mine own, 
To voice the love that thronged 
My heart, now grown 
With love matured thro' days 
All filled with thoughts of you; 
So love, I sought your face. 
Nor dreamt, nor knew. 

The throstle called his mate, 
And In the vales of Spring 

[7] 



LOVE THAT WAITED 

Life ran with joy elate 
Thro' everything; 
'* Now will I go to her 
With gentle words and sweet, 
Love's joyous messenger, 
My Queen to greet ! " 

But when I found my love, 
Her lips were cold as snow. 
She did not speak or move. 
She could not know : 
Silent she lay in rest. 
The cross within her hands. 
Two lilies on her breast; 
None understands 
Why, in the night, I rise 
Seeking the silent place 
Where in the dark she lies, 
Hiding her face. 



[8] 



REMEMBRANCE 

CALLING of birds In the leafy elms, twilight 
creeping o'er river and lea, 
Fierce and full on the low horizon swims the sun 

in a crimson sea; 
The soft wind whispers, the lilac blossom sways in 

a scented dream of blue, 
And the woodland slumbers, the shadows gather, 
but I am restless and think of you. 

Where are you now, does your heart remember? 
here, where you left me, I cannot forget — 

Though Winter has vanished and Spring runs riot, 
that one wild hour Is with me yet! 

The leaves had fallen, the night was chilly, the 
wind shrieked past us In search of prey. 

Driving the withered blossoms of Summer, mock- 
ing the garlands that decked her way; 

But dearer than hours of golden leisure, softer 
than days of a flower-sweet June, 

Sweeter than strains of a distant music, fairer far 
than a woodland moon 

[9] 



REMEMBRANCE 

Ghostly and pale 'mid the gaunt, black branches, 

that one wild hour I hold through Time, 
When vows were uttered and silence followed, — 

naught save the beat of your heart on mine, — 
For years we may heed not, a moment immortal 

may rule all our dreams and the days to be. 
And the Past may die not but live forever, yet 

Life hold naught save a memory. 



Chiming of bells in the old church tower, crying of 

fowl on the lilied lake. 
The lawns are bright with the last low glimmer, 

the loud rooks wheel on the homeward wake; 
The old hall windows flash golden sunwards, the 

smoke curls up in the windless air. 
Terrace and arbour and walk are voiceless, do 

they remember who wandered there? 
The low sweet laughter, the rustle of garments, 

the echoing footsteps on gravel and stone — 
They know, they know, and for old sounds listen, 

mutely sad as I pace alone; 
Steps where you trod and paths where you wan- 
dered, all are dear to me, speaking of you — 
[lo] 



REMEMBRANCE 

Even If one should cease to remember, these things 

would forget not and still be true; 
New voices will fall where your voice has fallen, 

new feet will tread In the paths that were 

ours, 
Our ears will hear not the birds at even, our eyes 

will see not the blossoms and flowers; 
But one hour shall be sacred from Time the De- 

spoller, the sunset hour when shadows fall, — 
Then shall old sorrows seem good to remember, 

old footsteps echo, old voices call. 



[II] 



THE ENCHANTED WOOD 

THERE is a wood, I know It well — 
Where broods a hidden mystery, 
I sometimes think the birds could tell 
Its strange and awesome history. 

The trees so thickly grow therein 
That all In darkest silence broods, — 
It seems a place of gloom wherein 
Deep passions war with evil moods. 

Oh, once I saw, when passing by, 

Upon a moonlit night In June, 

An Altar with a Cross on high 

That gleamed beneath the waning Moon; 

And In the spectral glow, the trees 
Became as living things that sang 
A thousand Benedlcltes, 
Until the hills with echoes rang! 

I stood amazed. In breathless awe. 
The Altar glowed with sacred Light! 

[12] 



THE ENCHANTED WOOD 

I cannot tell the things I saw 

Within the wood that wondrous night; 

For when It seemed my senses cleared, 
The vision in the wood was gone, 
I only know that something weird. 
Beyond all power of speech, was done. 

The universal voice of Earth 
Rose in one agonising groan. 
And all the trees of stoutest girth 
Bowed down unto the Altar stone — 

Then from the holy Mystery 
The Moon withdrew behind a cloud. 
And there was nothing more to see, — 
A mist, o'er all, lay like a shroud. 



[13] 



PHYLLISTRATON 

An Arcadian Idyll 
(To William Kiddier) 

OLD deeds, old customs sound the sweeter still 
Though newer, and oft greater, events will 
Overshadow them and by their newer ring 
Make old tales die. We lose upon Timers wing 
All interest with those past days now flown — 
Hidden with age^s dust and half unknown: 
But oft the world when seeking new delight 
Will on so?ne remnant of the past alight. 
Some legend or folk-lore in whispers told 
Around the farmhouse fire in Winter^s cold. 
When leaping flames make shadows jump and 

dance 
And from each nook and corner goblins glance. 
Many a time and oft the tale relates 
How some great hero, girded by the Fates, 
Has conquered city, town, or ventured far 
In hidden realms and honour won in war. 
Such are the fables; freely fancy weaves 

[14] 



PHYLLISTRATON 

And age adds romance to the hoary leaves. 
Why should we lose these dim and charming tales 
Of peoples living in the misty vales 
Where happy maidens sing the whole day long 
And vie with nightingales in raptured song? 

The night still held the woods In heavy sleep, 
And through the waving branches oft would peep 
Some star that waited for the coming day 
To show Its rosy edge along the bay, 
To tip the restless waves with silver light 
And banish from the world the gloom of night. 
The groves of Arcady had not yet heard 
The matin song of joy from soaring bird. 
And silence reigned, save where the streamlet fell 
To lower earth and wound across the dell. 
Then slowly through the trees there softly came 
A rosy light and bathed the leaves In flame. 
The rank mists fled before the warming light. 
The birds awoke and took their early flight. 
The streamlet In the dell now sang aloud. 
The singing lark had mounted till a cloud 
Hid him from human eye, but still his song 
Fluttered to earth and echoed all along 

[15] 



PHYLLISTRATON 

The wooded paths and more secluded groves 
Where lived in shy retreat the cooing doves. 
Then o'er the distant plain the sound of song 
Was carried by the breeze, and all among 
The fernbanks and the rose woods, trooping, came 
Garlanded children, laughing in their game; 
And o'er their lithe young limbs in clusters hung 
Roses and violets, profusely strung 
On winding vines. Their only garment fell 
From shoulder to the knee, displaying well 
The clear cut features and the rosy cheek. 
And moulded limbs; in vain the eye might seek 
For ages and no fairer vision find: 
Not even fleeting bird or panting hind 
A fairer picture makes than childish forms 
Unmarred by evil things, or life's rough storms 
That line the face and dim the lustrous eye 
And make once happy folk entreat to die. 
The cares of life had placed no mark on these 
Blithe spirits, for they danced beneath the trees 
With Youth's light joy, abandoning the thought 
With what for them the morrow might be fraught. 
Still trooping came the joyous, happy throng. 
Hailing the morn with laughter and with song, 

[i6] 



PHYLLISTRATON 

Until the echoes rang throughout the dell 
And rolled along to where the water fell 
In sparkling cascades to a darkened pond 
Whose chill green depths revealed the floating 

frond. 
The morning haze hung o'er its surface still, 
And tragedy seemed In its waters chill: 
Whither this water flowed no one had found: 
Perhaps it ran to caverns underground, 
Whose slimy roofs ne'er saw the sun's bright ray. 
And surging 'neath the world, found light of day 
Far, far from where It dipped to deepest gloom; 
Thence to a sunlit shore where surges boom 
Upon the parched sand, and palm trees toss 
Their plumy tops when cool winds blow across 
The lonely land. Sweetly the children sang 
Their morning anthem and the echoes rang 
Throughout the leafy woods. Far off wa.s heard 
Another music, solemn and more weird. 
Not from the piping voice of Youth, but song 
More richly blended, seeming full and strong 
With life : and lo, where part the woods to show 
A patch of sky, bright with the sun's warm glow. 
There came in view dim figures: as they strode 

[17] 



PHYLLISTRATON 

Oft would they turn to one who stately rode 
Upon a throne high placed in a car, 
Pulled by a troop of maidens casting far 
Roses and other blooms. The sombre woods 
Grew bright with splendrous robes and wondrous 

goods 
Sparkling with gems. 

The car and round about 
Was thronged with folk who made a joyous 

shout — 
" Phyllistraton, the King of Calydon! 
Hail noble King! Apollo's bravest son! '* 
He, turning, smiled upon the cheering mass 
And spake. " Good people, let my carriage pass, 
For see, yon shining temple to great Pan 
Urges me onwards, for is there a man 
Would tarry when the dream of his delight 
In bridal garb awaits him? Wondrous bright 
Are her blue eyes, so blue that not the sea, 
Nor even the wide expanse over thee, 
Can show a blue so lustrous and so pure ! 
For many maidens fair would I endure 
Hardships and trials, but for her alone 
Would I sell liberty. She would atone 

[i8] 



PHYLLISTRATON 

For basest servitude, and chains of gold 
Should bind me fast ! 

The gods once made me bold, 
And venturing In Arcady, I gazed 
And stood transfixed by beauty — so amazed 
That doubts o'ercame me, and I asked again 
If 'twas Olympian or Arcadian plain, — 
Not where the gods dwell, but where shepherds 

free 
Pipe to great Pan beneath the laurel tree. 
'Twas then her young attendant I espied, 

And running towards her In hot haste, I cried ■ 

*What fair shade haunts thy dell, hath she a 

name? 
Such beauty surely won undying fame ! ' 
And In low tones the maid rephed, ' Sir, she 
Is Chryseia, the daughter of Acte, 
Of charm so great that Artemis hath made 
Her keeper of the dell and forest glade.' 
'Twas thus I came to know this charming child. 
For child she was, and Is; — of manner mild 
And meek: such Is her gentle sympathy. 
To her, the timid kid for company 
Will come, and all the world to her is kind. 

[19] 



PHYLLISTRATON 

Haste then, my willing escort, leave behind 
All thought of sorrow, joy with me this day, 
And speed two happy lovers on their way! " 

The temple to great Pan was wondrous bright 

With fluted pillars, carved in marble white; 

Its hundred steps were thronged, and where the 

pool 
In its great, massive basin caught the cool 
Bright jet of water springing from a fount 
That drew its silv'ry spray from distant mount, 
The maids of Chryseia sat nervously. 
Oft one would rise and very tenderly 
Impress a kiss upon her mistress' cheek, 
And ChryseTa, bewildered, turned to seek 
With eager eyes of love, the distant sward 
Whence slowly came her future liege and lord 
Amidst the sound of cymbals and of song. 
At last the rose-filled car was brought along, 
And scarce had halted when from out it ran 
The lovesick boy. The temple to great Pan 
Trembled beneath the mighty roar which swelled 
Up to the heavens when the folk beheld 
Their ChryseTa run to the outstretched arms 

[20] 



PHYLLISTRATON 

Of him who offered her a lover's charms: 
And as he drew her to his manly breast 
Kiss after kiss upon her brow he pressed, 
While she lay gathered In his arms half faint 
With boundless joy, and love without restraint. 

While thus they stood, mounting the steps there 

came 
A tall white-bearded figure, halting, lame, 
But from all sides great reverence was shown 
To this newcomer, for his name was known 
Far off across the plains of Arcady, 
From high Olympus to Leonidi. 
So mighty were his works that when he spake 
The wind was silenced. 

From far off men take 
Their harvest offerings to him and he, 
The Priest of Pan, with all solemnity 
Would offer to the god, with chant and song. 
Their thanks for winters short and summers long. 
This happy morn the Priest had other task — 
To pour the wedding oil from out his flask 
And ask a blessing of those august powers 
That bless with bliss and give to wedded hours 

[21] 



PHYLLISTRATON 

Another joy than love — the eyes of Youth, 
That see not fading beauty; want of truth 
In such perception then Is virtuous. 

Slowly the Priest advanced and spake, 

" To us, 
O children of the Plains of Arcady, 
O shepherds of the glade and grassy lea, 
Is given cause for joy. This Is the day 
When we are merry as we sing our lay 
To our god Pan. The woods this morn shall 

ring, 
For see what rosy garlands children bring 
To deck the Altar — such a scene should see 
Our Chryseia, fair daughter of Acte, 
Given to one, though young, yet old In song 
And deeds that make men valiant, true and strong. 
Phylllstraton, thou King of Calydon, 
O stranger of strange race, yet there Is none 
More fit to take unto a loving breast 
Our maiden pure. But heed! before are pressed 
In wedded joy her shapely lips to thine. 
Thou must fulfil the oracle divine 
Which runneth In the legend of our land, 

[22] 



PHYLLISTRATON 

And list ye well that ye may understand, — 
' He who shall claim the daughter of Acte 
Shall play upon the flute a melody 
Upon the morning of the feast to Pan, 
And such his playing that there be not man 
Who can outvie him.' 

So if there Is one, 
Let him proclaim It here. If there is none 
To challenge him, then shall the victor claim 
His prize — the maiden Chryseia, and fame 
Shall rest upon his brow. Ye people hear, 
For I shall ask no more. Is he to wear 
The victor's laurel? Heed, it Is your choice 
To challenge or to crown him with your voice! " 

Quickly in answer rose a mighty shout 

That swelled and spread o'er dale and round 

about, 
Proclaiming with a universal voice 
Phyllistraton was the free people's choice. 
And as the master of the flute that morn 
His was the prize. But scarce the cry was borne 
Throughout the grove, scarce had the echoes died. 
When, to their cry, a deep loud voice replied — 

[23] 



PHYLLISTRATON 

''/ claim the prize as master of the flute! '' 
The whole throng turned about, surprised and 

mute 
To see who spake so boldly. When they gazed 
Upon the challenger they were amazed; 
So poor, he has a skin about his loins ! 
The Priest himself with all the people joins 
The laughter which uprises to the sky 
At thought that such a man should dare to try 
To gain the prize ! Yet pleasing was his face. 
And thus unclad, his Egure had a grace 
That kings might envy, and his wavy hair 
In curls hung o'er his brow; his chest was bare, 
His neck, browned with the sun, and by his side 
A scrip hung down, from which, with conscious 

pride. 
He drew his flute. Then spake he to them all 
In simple words, from 'neath the Altar's pall — 
'* O people of the Plains of Arcady, 
Ye marvel that a shepherd like to me 
Should be so bold and claim the beauteous prize ! 
Knew I not Love before, those bright blue eyes 
Would teach me now, and such a form divine 
Would make me yearn until I called her mme. 

[24] 



PHYLLISTRATON 

'TI? not on kings alone that Love can throw 

Its spell, but on us all, nor can love know, 

If It Is love of Love, and not of Gain, 

The claim of rank or riches. No, In vain 

They oft would buy ■ — a jewel hath its price, 

But Love hath none save willing sacrifice 

Of all that we once loved to one we love : 

That Is the only test by which to prove 

If love Is love of that which Love shall bring 

In rich possessions, such as hath a king. 

Or if It Is a love where poverty 

Shall ever grip, but where can never be 

Regret, such love enriches all with all 

That life can ever give. Hence do I call 

And take the challenge up. Now hark ye well, 

For I will play, and after, ye shall tell 

If there be one among you who can play 

A sweeter lay than mine." 

Thus did he say 
Unto the people gathered. While they talked 
Among themselves of his strange words, he 

walked 
To where the Priest sat. When he held his flute 
Up to his lips, the whispers died, and mute 

[25] 



PHYLLISTRATON 

All waited, breathless, for the first few notes. 
Then on the air there waveringly floats 
The sound of song, so low and yet so sweet, 
More like unto the first light sounds which greet 
The starry night when first the nightingale 
Sends forth his plaintive carol o'er the vale. 
And mounting, ever higher, richer, grows 
Until the hearer dreams the song which throws 
Its flood of melody is not of earth 
But from some realm of joy and tuneful mirth. 
Those first light notes turned back their thoughts 

again 
To that romantic age when strong rough men 
First wandered in the groves of Arcady 
Enchanted with a dreamy melody 
That led them on until they found at last 
Pastoral plains, where wild deer flitted past, 
Alarmed at these intruders of their peace: 
The strangers gazed, then music seemed to cease, 
And darkness crept across the open lea; 
The wind among the trees moaned as the sea 
And fearfully around the whisper ran 
" We are enchanted — 'tis the pipes of Pan 
Hath led us to his groves in Arcady " 

[26] 



PHYLLISTRATON 

And settling there they lived quite happily — 

Such was the legend which those notes recalled, 

And many, fearing, listened, much appalled. 

Those floating notes seemed not of mortal birth 

But higher origin of nobler worth. 

Still higher and yet higher, mounting still. 

The soaring notes outpoured across the rill 

And echoed back across the plain again. 

The children harked, enraptured, and the men 

In silence stood, half wond'ring, half afraid. 

The King of Calydon still held the maid. 

And loth to part, he shot defiant looks 

At him who played. The kingly mind III brooks 

Obstruction to its plans, and had he dared 

He would have fought — and yet — and yet he 

feared 
That simple shepherd — all his valour fled. 
And though no coward, there within him said, 
In warning tones, a voice, '' No mortal this 
Sweet player, of the flute, Olympus' bliss 
Hath taught such song to flow! " Those notes 

still soared 
Until It seemed as if the heavens poured 
The golden song that flooded all the sky; 

[27] 



PHYLLISTRATON 

A song, not from the earth, but from the high 
Broad realms above. Could mortal breath in- 
spire 
A song that breathed of this dlvinest fire? 
Those last pure sounds of earth could never be, 
But a strayed chord from Heaven's symphony. 

Scarce had the player ceased when quickly ran 
A whisper all around, " 'Tis Pan! 'Tis Pan! 
The Pipes of Pan! Great Pan hath come 

again! " 
In haste the stranger quelled the cry, " I fain 
Would be a God, yet wherefore call me Pan — 
The wish is not the deed, would any man 
A mortal be if wish could make him God? 
Nor have I yet on high Olympus trod, 
I am not Pan, but taught by Pan to play 
The flute he gave me when, one summer's day, 
I sat and slept beside the running stream. 
Dreaming that Pan had come; yet 'twas a dream 
Most real, and when I woke, within my hand 
I found a flute, and now throughout the land 
I wend my way and pipe to who will hear. 
And now, once more, I claim the maiden dear 

[28] 



PHYLLISTRATON 

From her young lover. Maiden ! come ! O 

come 
And let me lead you to my forest home, 
Deep In the thickest woods where roses grow 
Around the stunted boles, where streamlets show 
Their sUv'ry faces winding thro' the glade. 
To sunlight leaping from the forest's shade, 
With spray, like flashing jewels, falling where 
The rushing stream whirls o'er the roaring weir; 
The morn awakes to song of soaring lark, 
And rays of sunshine In the forest dark 
Disperse the morning mists. The slumberous day 
Is fragrant with the scent of new mown hay. 
And evening's calm cool hours sweeter seem 
Than all the fevered day. A golden gleam, 
Reflected from the glory of the sky. 
Where glowing colours blaze and quickly die. 
Touches the leaves with fire. A breeze Is sent 
And whispers through the woods a sad lament 
Like a sweet vesper hymn melodious. 
Which lulls the woods to deeper sleep. To us 
All things that can delight shall make our 

days 
One happy dream amidst life's sunlit ways. 

[29] 



PHYLLISTRATON 

O Priest of Pan ! Ye people of the plains ! 
Award to me this maiden for my pains." 

As thus he spake, Phyllistraton then took 
The maiden by the hands. *' I will not brook 
The one who loves me, and is loved by me, 
To share the humble lot of such as he ! 
Love hath a greater tie than that of song; 
If Pan himself should pipe the whole day long 
My Chryseia would still be mine, for Love 
Ignores the powers of Earth or Heaven above ! 
No ! Chryseia, dear Chryseia shall reign 
As Queen of Calydon o'er my domain, 
A queen of Beauty should be queen of Earth, 
A simple shepherd knows not beauty's worth. 
No Idle legend breaks our plighted troth 
E'en If it doth invoke Olympus' wrath! " 

And as he boldly spake these words he turned 
To all the people gathered. 

" I have earned 
True love with love, and not with magic song. 
Then answer all ye people — Shall the wrong, 

[30] 



PHYLLISTRATON 

False legend take away my joy in life 
And rob me of a queen and of a wife? " 

The question rang throughout the woods and died, 
But neither murmur nor a sound replied. 
A sullen silence held them as a spell; 
Love or a legend, which? — but none could tell. 
Then as they stood, arose a mighty roar, 
A rushing wind swept all the leaves before, 
The heavens rent, and vivid flashes lit 
The darkened scene. The temple dome was hit 
And bathed in vivid flames by lightning flash. 
The very earth shook 'neath the thund'rous crash, 
Yet o'er it all was heard the wind's wild cry, 
As though a host of demons thro' the sky 
Were flying, wailing, from their dreadful doom I 
But louder still than all the thund'rous boom 
Of crashing trees, as tho' in terror's throes, 
An awful shriek from him who piped arose — 
" I hear! I hear! " he cried, with arms outflung. 
Beneath a stricken tree whose branches hung 
In woeful state; and as he spake there ceased 
The moaning cry, as though a spirit wrest 
Itself away from earth, and there he stood 

[31] 



PHYLLISTRATON 

In terror near the border of the woo'd. 

" Ye people of the Plains of Arcady! 

That was the Naiad's cry ! Ah woe is me ! 

That moaning voice proclaims my end is nigh! 

Alas ! for me to love is but to die ! 

Maid of my heart, sweet child who taught me 

love, 
Faint not nor fear, thy lover need not prove 
H.is angry words. The dawn is soon the night 
Of my young love; the blossom, soon a blight 
Hath dashed Its pride, yet, though It meaneth 

death, 
I find a joy in each fast fleeting breath 
That hurries me from life. Sweet maid, but hear 
My fate forlorn, and should a tender tear 
In pity fall for me, then do I go 
Unto my fate, happy in that I know 
One heart that mourns for me, and such a heart. 
That for It our short breath would often part 
And leave Its narrow prison for the great 
Broad unknown realms above. Hark, I relate 
The story of my hapless wanderings : — 
One dewy eve I sat expanding rings 
Upon a pool, which grew until they died 

[32] 



PHYLLISTRATON 

In calm and nothingness. When I espied 

This strange unrestfulness, wherefore It showed, 

Full eager was I then, for sunsets glowed 

All mirrored In perfection other eves 

Upon Its glassy face. The trunks and leaves 

That fringed the water's edge, reflected grew 

Within Its depths, fantastic and anew. 

Charmed was I with this spot, and so I played 

Upon my flute. Softly the evening's shade 

Its filmy mantle threw across the glen, 

But I played on in happiness — and then. 

Ah, then ! Could words relate the sight that rose 

From out those dull green depths — the sweet 

repose. 
The dazzling beauty of that perfect face. 
The flowing hair, still wet and with a trace 
Of that phosphorous fire which dwells below ! 
Thus rose the Naiad, solemn, stately, slow, 
Venus herself could not more handsome be 
When reigning o'er her court. Then unto me 
The Naiad spake. 

* O shepherd piper, thou 
Hast made the queen of Naiads break a vow 
That she would never rise up from beneath 

[33] 



PHYLLISTRATON 

These waters which the water lilies sheath. 
But such a song would make a vow a sin 
If it were kept. Fair youth, I shelter in 
These gloomy depths in refuge from the wrath 
Of Venus who in jealous hatred hath 
Pursued me in her fury. Here I dwell 
Amidst the damp rank weeds. Could maiden tell 
A sadder story? Pipe once more to me, 
For it recalls the past — tho' memory 
Doth pain : yet pipe, for ever pain's a joy 
When I but see again that shepherd boy, 
One such as thou, who played his happy song 
And vowed his love to me the whole day long.' 
'Twas thus she spake, her tones were sweet and 

low 
Like zephyr winds on summer days that flow 
In melody afar. I loudly cried — 
' One loves you yet! ' but sadly she replied, 
* No, never now, my fate is thus to be 
And sadly pine away: 'tis not for me 
To know the joy of Love ! ' Again I cried, 
' O water nymph, happy that I espied 
Your beauteous form, for know, one loves you yet, 
These eyes, this heart of mine, can ne'er forget 

[34] 



PHYLLISTRATON 

What they have seen and loved ! ' 

" The Naiad turned 
And spake to me, ' Oh, often have I yearned 
To hear such words of love — and wilt thou vow 
To love but me alone? ' She spake so low 
And dreamily, bewitched with beauty, I, 
In fervent accents quickly made reply — 
* O Naiad fair, may all the gods above 
Avenge with death if ever I should love 
And vow in words to others save to you ! ' 
And as I vowed, she sank beneath from view. 
Thus did I swear my love, tho' now I know 
It was bewitching charm that made me vow, 
And often have I wondered if I dreamed 
All that I thought I saw. The waters gleamed 
And rippled, but in vain I waited there. 
For ne'er returned again that Naiad fair. 
Since then for many seasons have I played 
My flute throughout the land, and never stayed 
In peace. Where'er I roamed, my vow of love 
Made me afraid, lest that the gods above 
Should vengeance take if ever I made speech 
To maiden fair. In vain would I beseech 
Those waters cold to show the form again 

[35] 



PHYLLISTRATON 

Of her I loved. But true love makes us fain 
Forget the ties of old for new desire. 
Dear maiden, though 'tis death, I still aspire 
To call thee mine. Alas, for me the breath 
Which tells my love announces also death, 
But love cares not for death, and though my heart 
With sorrow breaks, still rather would I part 
With life Itself than not declare my love ! 
I have declared It, and the gods above 
Now take their vengeance ! Maiden dear, fare- 
well, 
I, dying, leave thee. Far off In a dell 
My eyes will close In sleep for evermore. 
And they shall ope upon a brighter shore 
Where I await thy coming." 

Thus he said. 
And as he spake he looked as though one dead; 
The rosy cheeks were blanched : a pallid hue 
Spread o'er his face, and on his lithe form grew 
The weight of years, enfeebling all his frame; 
Then towards the temple steps, he, halting, came. 
And taking both the maiden's hands in his, 
He lowly bent and gave to each a kiss. 
The people stood in silent awe to see 

[36] 



PHYLLISTRATON 

This climax of a lover's tragedy; 

Phyllistraton^s blue eyes were dimmed with mist 

When that enfeebled, dying player kissed 

The hands he loved. " Farewell I I go to die, 

To die for love ! Farewell!" 

That last low cry 
Rang o'er the dell and thro' the quivering air, 
Filled with a sad lament and deep despair. 
Then through their midst he passed across the 

glade 
And disappeared within the forest's shade. 
In silence stood they all, and not a sound 
Was heard within the dell. A hush profound 
Had fall'n upon the earth, till came a breeze 
And made a tearful sigh among the trees, 
But over all they heard the Naiad's cry 
Float in the air, and then, echoing, die 
With one deep sob among the distant hills, 
Shaking the mountain tops and glistening rills. 
And lastly, heard they from the forest deep 
The roaring of a wind, which seemed to weep. 
And wither by its touch the falling leaves. 
In fancy, moaning loud — " Thus, Nature 



grieves ! " 



[37] 



MOONLIGHT SONATA 

WHEN I walked out from Grasmere Vale, 
One hour after eventide, 
The Moon had risen weirdly pale, 

And the wind blew far and wide 
The withered leaves, all brown and sere, 
That told me of the mellowing year. 

Then, suddenly, I saw a sight 
That made me pause upon my way — > 
A flickering maze of dancing light 
That shone like silver spray! 
I stood entranced, forgetting all. 
And powerless In the vision's thrall. 

It was a simple thing, I know, 

A few dead leaves stirred by the breeze 

That danced and made a spectral glow 

Beneath the barren trees; 
It seemed as though they yet had life 
To mock the wind in joyous strife ! 

[38] 



MOONLIGHT SONATA 

Beneath the Moon they shone so bright, 
And flickered with such ghostllness; 
Embodied spirits of the night, 

Beneath the Moon's caress 
They tossed and twirled, and round and round 
They blithely capered o'er the ground ! 

When, suddenly, they all did cease 
Their dancing In the moonlit way; 
The breeze died down, and all was peace, 

And so I did not stay — 
The wind. It was their very breath, 
And gone, they all lay still in death ! 



[39] 



TO A LADY 

LADY, how can the least, Imperfect art, 
However used with skill, suffice to prove 
Or give expression to the tender love 
Grown 'neath the radiance thy dear smiles impart? 
I am held captive by thy gentle heart 
And daily made thy debtor, and above 
All beauteous things, imperial, thou dost move 
In queenly office held by queenly art; 

Therefore I am most happy when thy thought 
Towards me is turned, and like an Eastern slave 
Whose silent homage won a Queen for friend, 
I live and serve within thy gracious Court, 
Finding the slightest sign of love I gave 
Repaid with graces which no Arts transcend. 



[40] 



JOY 

WHO named thee Joy — what Delphic 
whisper told 
Thy mission to the hearts of men, what muse 
Divined the treasure of thy heart's pure gold? 
Wert thou so named that poets might enthuse 
And In the whispering might find sweet excuse 
For drinking nectar which thy lips enfold? 
For those who know thee, Joy, forget the cold 
Relentless world, paying young Love his dues. 

Joy in the days of Spring came down to me, 
Love in her heart, and laughter in her eyes. 
And in her speech a dulcet melody 
Wherein two hearts commingled, with soft sighs 
Trembling between the pauses, when the lips. 
Voiceless with passion, sought the soul's eclipse. 



[41] 



MEMORIES 

(To Mrs. Naylor) 

DO you remember 
Claude, Lancelot and I 
Lying in wonder, 
Beneath a May sky, 

Listening in silence 'mid green Malvern hills 
To the song of the lark and its wonderful trills? 

Do you remember — 

You cannot forget! 

Listening in wonder 

I see your face yet; 

List'ning, I whispered, *' Ah, if we could sing 

As yon lark in the sky ! How his melodies ring ! " 

" Chorister, singing 
High up in blue heaven, 
Oh that a part of 
Thy rapture were given, 

[42] 



MEMORIES 

Poet that soarest, to one who would soar, 
One who lives for his song, for his song and no 
more ! '* 

Do you remember 
Those words which I spake, 
Lying with you 
And with yours in the brake? 
Clouds floated over us, what did we care 
For the lark was our minstrel, our wine was the 
air! 

Ceaselessly toiling 
With quivering wings, 
Higher he reaches 
And blither he sings, 

With a paean of song from a heart overjoyed 
He is gone from our sight, 'tis a voice from the 
void! 

Do you remember 
Down, down from the blue 
Dropping, he came then, 
*Tis certain you do ! 

[43] 



MEMORIES 

" Look how he dives ! " I remember you said, 
Then he dived, and the hills were as dumb as the 
dead. 

Do you remember • — • 

Oh I can you forget — 

Moments so golden 

Come back to me yet, 

Lancelot and Dorothy, Claude, you and I ■ — 

All listening to one little bird in the skyl 



[44] 



STRAYED HYLAS 

aiiv Kai oi "TXas Kieu, icrdXbs biraaav^ 
irpiadiiP'riSf luiv re (popevs 0uXa/c6s re /3toto. 

APrONATTIKfiN. 

HYLAS, the beautiful Hylas, ere Manhood 
had broadened his frame, 
Was comely In sight of all maidens, and Heracles, 

passing one day, 
Seeing him playing all naked, called out to him: 

*' Tell me thy name ! " 
And the youth answered thus: "I am Hylas, 

what wouldst thou, O Stranger, O say! " 
And Heracles, worshipping Beauty, was charmed 

with the handsome young Greek, 
For dark were his eyes, and his body glistened 

brightly with wrestler's oil, 
And his was the grace of Apollo. " O lustrous- 
limbed athlete, I seek 
A pupil to learn of my cunning, which knowledge 

shall bring him much spoil. 
Tomorrow, when breaks o'er the ocean the light 

of the Dawn, I depart 

[45] 



STRAYED HYLAS 

With Jason, whose vessel awaits me, to join In the 

Quest of the Fleece; 
Come, follow! thy limbs they are lithesome, the 

voyage will need a brave heart. 
But Heracles, he will o'erguard thee, no stronger 

than he In all Greece." 



Then quick the reply of young Hylas: '' O 

master, I follow thee now I 
My limbs they are stout, for this noonday I 

wrestled with Crassus the Strong, 
And conquered the Pride of lolchus; this laurel 

they placed on my brow, 
Not unworthy a pupil thou'lt find me. Accept 

me, O master, I long 
For venture where danger o'erthreatens, for sight 

of the Land of the West, 
And the breath of the soft-heaving ocean! Blow, 

winds ! for we sail in the Morn ! 
Swift Argo goes out from the harbour, goes forth 

to the Isles of the Blessed, 
And Jason, with Heracles, leads us! Aurora! 

Come, Goddess of Dawn! " 

[46] 



STRAYED HYLAS 

So Hylas sailed forth from lolchus, and Heracles 

loved the young boy, 
He trained him to feats of endurance, he gave him 

the wealth of his lore, 
And daily young Hylas grew stronger, his beauty 

to all was a joy, 
And, were he a God from Olympus, they could not 

have worshipped him more. 
His laughter was light as the sunshine, his teeth 

were as pearls set between 
Lips like the bow of young Eros, and brighter 

than stars were his eyes. 
His body was sweet as stored apples, and as silk 

was its naked sheen. 
So young Hylas 'mid men was held peerless, by 

maidens a coveted prize. 



Day after day sailed the galley, the rhythmical 

beat of the oars 
Kept time with the song of the minstrels who sang 

of the glories of war; 
It fired the sailors to action, till, riding 'twixt 

Hellespont's shores, 

[47] 



STRAYED HYLAS 

They anchored in lee of a mountain that looked 

on the bay from afar. 
Like porphyry gleaming in sunset, the cliffs 

towered up to the sky, 
And round them were odorous valleys. " Here 

rest we awhile ! " cried they all, 
And, forth from the galley outleaping, they ran to 

the fields that were nigh. 
Where gladly they rested or feasted, or bathed in 

the waterfall. 
O beauteous valley, all golden! for here 'mid the 

violets grew 
Pale lilies and hyacinths stately, that dreamed in 

the water below, 
And sweet was the slumberous noonday, and soft 

were the zephyrs that threw 
The scent of the violet meadows, at dusk when the 

West was aglow. 



So Hylas was happy and wandered, the fairest of 

all that was fair. 
He lay 'mid the blooms amaranthine and sang to 

Apollo an hymn, 

[48] 



STRAYED HYLAS 

Or bathed In bright rivers of crystal, or plaited the 

vine in his hair, 
And danced like the naked Silenus, enacting each 

transient whim. 
One day by a pool he lay dreaming, his couch was 

a hyacinth bed. 
His hand idly dipped in the waters when softly a 

beautiful face. 
Out of the depths slowly rising, perceiving the 

boy's curly head, 
Uttered a cry of amazement, and loved the young 

Greek for his grace. 
Then quickly she called through the waters, and 

Malls and Eunica came 
To Nychea, fair as a lily — together the nymphs 

took his hand, 
Then gently they lifted his body, all fearing to 

shatter a frame 
Moulded with beauty so wondrous, so strong, yet 

so lithe and so grand. 
Oh, how their bosoms beat quickly as to them they 

pressed the fair boy. 
And, dreaming, he clasped Malls to him, then, 

waking, was startled to find 

[49] 



STRAYED HYLAS 

The nymph in his arms gently nestling, her face 
filled with radiant joy, 

While Eunica pillowed him softly, her hair float- 
ing o'er from behind. 

Then Nychea whispered: " Dear Hylas, we love 
thee, for ever dwell here, 

Thy strength and thy beauty delight us, reign King 
of the Nymphs of the Pool ! " 

But Hylas upstarting cried: "Never! Where 
am I? come, tell me, O where? " 

Then the nymph answered: "Why wouldst es- 
cape us? — this grotto is splendrous and 
cool!" 

" Hearken then, Naiads, my reason is not that I 

count Love so light. 
For this is the realization of shadowy dreams I 

have dreamed 
Of bosoms on which I slept pillowed through all 

the dark joy of the night. 
No! I hold Love too precious to scorn it; were 

thy promises all that they seemed, 
Duty forbids me to linger, the galley that rides in 

the bay 

[50] 



STRAYED HYLAS 

Awaits my return; then release me, or Jason, our 

leader, will frown, 
For the sailors have long left the meadows, we 

sail out at sunset today. 
We sail to the West, out to Phasis, in the path 

where the sun rolls down. 
Beauty! ah, what is my beauty? — a thing that 

must fade with the day, 
These arms now so lusty and lithesome, my body 

now throbbing with life, 
These thighs with their shimmering muscles that 

glide in their sheaths as they play, 
Time-enfeebled, are scattered to ashes, the sport 

of the winds in their strife. 



" Love is a libertine. Naiads, he maketh mine eyes 

so to burn 
Like stars in the vestment of darkness that, madly 

enraptured, ye cry. 
Nor hear how the snarer exultingly laughs at the 

passions that yearn 
All hot for the scent of my body; and thoughtless, 

at bidding, ye fly, 

C51] 



STRAYED HYLAS 

Clasping with passionate sobbings, outpouring 

your love in mine ear, 
Till he, who resisted, is helpless, succumbs to your 

fiercest embrace ! 
O glorious strength that enfolds ye, how noble this 

manhood to wear! 
Strength is the pride of my being, Beauty the boast 

of my face ! — 
But listen, O Naiads, O hearken, 'tis vainly ye 

hold me, for I 
Must turn me away to the seashore, the galley 

awaits my return. 
O Naiads enchanting, I love ye, but Beauty like 

yours cannot die, 
My lustrous-limbed body will perish, not then for 

my love ye would yearn ! 
Hark ! 'Tis a voice that calls * Hylas ! * 

' Hylas ! ' — 'tis Heracles calls. 
He who has nurtured and loved me, Heracles, 

strongest of men! 
Nychea ! Eunica ! Malls ! — He wonders what 

fate me befalls! 
Release me, be merciful. Naiads! I fain would 

go to him again ! 

[52] 



STRAYED HYLAS 

*HyIas! Ho! Hylas! Where art thou?' 

He calls me — nay, words shall not soothe 
My body with dalliance fleshly, no bosom shall 

pillow my head; 
If your breasts were as fair as the lilies, if your 

skin were as waxen and smooth, 
If your lips were as rose leaves, no kisses, no 

,sighs, and no tears that ye shed, 
Would make me succumb to your beauty; release 

me ! these waters are dank, 
I pine for the rays of Apollo, I pant for the breath 

of the day I 
Release me, O Nymphs, I implore ye ! for when 

through these waters I sank, 
Ye promised to lead me back thither, now must I 

return on my way." 



But vainly he pleaded in accents, now angry, now 

tearful, now soft. 
The nymphs flung their white arms around him. 

" O Hylas, we love thee, here dwell! 
Remain with us here for we need thee, for thou 

art the boon that we oft 

[53] 



STRAYED HYLAS 

Petitioned Olympus to grant us; thy beauty hath 
pleased them so well, 

They sent thee, dear Hylas, then wherefore re- 
bellion when Gods make decree? 

Reject not, lest worse should befall thee, the love 
that we offer thee now! 

Thou art fair, thou art beautiful, Hylas, — ' His 
beauty immortal shall be ! ' 

For thus spake the Gods of Olympus, nor falsely 
are known they to vow." 



So softly beguiled with their voices, he gave him 
to lover's delights. 

And the nymphs of the grotto, as servants, at- 
tended his slightest behest. 

But oft in the slumberous noondays, and oft In the 
calm of the nights, 

He bethought him of Heracles wandering, and 
wept when he thought of the Quest. 

And the Slayer of Lions, bemoaning, returned to 
Propontis' wild shore, 

But never a sign of the galley, all barren the sea 
met the sky, 

[54] 



STRAYED HYLAS 

For Jason had wearied of waiting — ''Return 

now each man to his oar! " 
And ploughing the furrows of ocean, they sailed 

where the sunsets die. 
Then Heracles turned to the westward — "The 

boy whom I loved, he is dead! ^' 
He cried in the depths of his sorrow, and ranging 

o'er dale and o'er glen, 
To Trachis, all footsore and weary, he journeyed 

through valley and mead. 
Nor Time sealed the fount of his sorrow, nor 

Springtide rejoiced him again. 
For Hylas he loved as a brother, and Hylas he 

loved as a son. 
And life that was golden grew cheerless, and 

heavy the heart that was light. 
"The Gods gave him Beauty," he muttered — 

" grew jealous of what they had done, 
So they struck at their rival so handsome; ah, who 

against Gods can fight? " 



[55] 



ON THE SEVERN 

WHEN the afternoon was golden 
In a boat we gently crept 
Up the river 'twixt the olden, 
Silent hills that softly slept, 

Till we came to dreaming Arley 
Climbing high beyond the bend — 
Dreaming, sun-red roofs from which slow wreaths 
of smoke ascend. 

When the fringe of hills lay burning 
As the Sun sank in the West, 
Down the misty stream returning, 
Softly gliding, oars at rest. 

We sang sweetly in the twilight 
As the purple hills turned grey, 
Floating, floating, floating down the silent home- 
ward way. 

O'er the sombre hills ascending 
Rose the Moon whose flooding light 

Ls6] 



ON THE SEVERN 

Changed the sullen river wending 
To a silver path through night; 

In our wake the rippling water 
Like a bed of diamonds shone, 
Gleaming, gleaming, gleaming as the boat went 
gliding on. 

Quaint, old Bewdley town lay dreaming 
Where the silver Severn flows 
With reflections brightly gleaming 
'Neath the lamplit bridge that throws 

Shafts of light upon the water 
Swirling dark and silently. 
Flowing, flowing, flowing past the arches to the 
sea. 

In the silence, long, long after, 
When those moments are no more, 
Still I hear the ghostly laughter 
With the sound of dipping oar, 

And my heart goes fondly dreaming, 
Down to Bewdley Bridge It goes — 
Gliding, gliding, gliding where the silver Severn 
flows ! 

[57] 



TO A LADY WHO PAINTED MY POR- 
TRAIT 

(H. S.) 

LADY, your eyes are quick to find 
The subtle shades upon a face, 
And with a touch, both true and kind, 
Your brush has left full many a trace 
Of the half-wonder and surprise 
That filled me as I watched the hand, 
So swift beneath your thoughtful eyes 
That look, and seeing, understand. 

For you have painted, not my face. 
But something which, with feeling rare, 
Your heart divined, and in the place 
Of eyes that merely gaze and stare 
You painted light diffused in gloom 
Because you knew a poet sees 
In Beauty, its foreshadowed doom, 
In Life, its hidden mysteries. 

[58] 



A LADY WHO PAINTED MY PORTRAIT 

Therefore, O lady, hand with eye 
And feeling heart combine to give 
That power of subtle alchemy 
By which your subjects truly live; 
And if a poet's soul has been 
Wholly revealed to you, be kind! 
Art, with its deeper sight, has seen 
Something to which the world is blind. 



[59] 



CLIFTON CHURCH 

PEACE ! Such a peace serene o'erbroods this 
place 
That melancholy Death for once seems fair, 
Even the winds have ceased their boisterous race, 
Once more upgathered to their hidden lair; 

Slowly the church clock chimes the hour of eight. 
Its fingers now grown golden in the light 
Of the swift-dropping sun, whose crimson state 
Fades in the grey and purple of the night; 

Shrilly afar, the peacock^s strident call 
Shatters the silence of this magic hour. 
Proudly he sweeps the lawns of Clifton Hall, 
Thinking his beauty greater than all power; 

Yet, foolish bird, even as thou this one, 

Forth in the glory of her bridal veil, 

Passed up the path, fleet flew the years, and gone. 

Hither they brought her, sightless, voiceless, pale. 

[60] 



CLIFTON CHURCH 

Joy she had known and happy was her lot; 
Lips of a sunbrowned youth in summer days, 
When all the air was slumberous and hot, 
Often had shaped them to her beauty's praise. 

Here 'neath an elm, he lies who kissed those lips, 
Stilled are the limbs that throbbed in ecstasy; 
Swiftly yon pointing finger onward slips 
Round the scored dial to Eternity. 

Turn ye aside and read this stone — '' Here lies, 

Age twenty-two, the body " — read no 

more ! 
In the few graven words my heart descries 
How much deep sorrow and despair they store I 

Knew ye not him? — He was a youth most fair. 
Graceful as ever Grecian sculptor dreamed: 
List to the roaring of the distant weir. 
Often his body in its waters gleamed: 

When o'er the earth the call of Spring was heard, 
When all the valley and the grove were gay. 
Filled with the blossom's scent and song of bird. 
Throbbing with life, he went at break of day, 

[6i] 



CLIFTON CHURCH 

And like a god that glories In his might, 
Cleaved he the waters with his strenuous arms, 
Nor do I wonder that each maiden's sight 
Fondly was turned to view his many charms. 

He knew the happy hours of youthful days, 
For often, knee-deep, 'mid the ferns he stood. 
Telling his love to one whose winsome ways 
Filled with strange passion youth's hot-sInglng 
blood. 

Thus thro' the years he grew to man's estate, 
A glorious creature full of strength and health, 
Little he knew how interweaving Fate 
Sought subtle Death to steal away Life's wealth. 

One morn, one happy, sunlit summer-morn 
When all the earth her fairest vesture donned, 
They found his Ivory body, bruised and torn, 
Down by the lashing weir, whose waters fond 

So oft his muscled arms had thrashed to foam. 
And by the floating weeds upborne he lay; 
Oh tender were the hands that bore him home ! 
Oh many were the tears they shed that day! 

[62] 



CLIFTON CHURCH 

See, where the church's trelHsed portal stands, 
Down by the shadow of the buttressed walls. 
Gleams a white angel with upraised hands? — 
A tender story that quiet spot recalls: 

A little bud, the coronal of Spring, 
From off the parent-tree of Motherhood, 
The tend'rest, sweetest, smiling little thing 
That ever sprang from human flesh and blood! 

Not long it blossomed in the cottage home, 
For ere the rose its fragrant petals shed. 
Long ere the swallows sought their southern home, 
The little bud of Life lay still and dead. 

Long thro' the summer night they watched beside 
The little cot, and when the birds at dawn 
Twittered their welcome to the day, it died. 
Life that had passed to Death ere scarcely born. 

Back to the Heavenly Gardener, here they bore 
The end of all their hopes and all their joy, 
Thus do we unto earth again restore 
The little thing she gives in Life's employ; 

[63] 



CLIFTON CHURCH 

Nor do I think In vain the sighs and tears, 
Life is not measured by its joys alone, 
Else were it vain to live and count the years, 
Else were Life's music one long monotone. 

Sorrow and Joy, by these two things we reap 
All the heart's harvest of its passionate sense. 
Death cannot be a blind, insensate sleep, 
'Tis but a change, a growth, a passing hence — 

Hence through the portals of that guarded Door, 
On through the sweeping curtains of the Night, 
Unto those silenced voices we implore 
Once but to speak and whisper all is right. 

Here, at this hour of changing Night and Day, 
Softly they sleep — why mourn the happy dead? 
Death never was creation's end, and say — 
Is the dead rose's fragrance vainly shed? 

When the sad strain of a sweet violin 
Ceases to flow from out the four-stringed heart. 
When a soft voice to eyes long dry doth win 
Tears, trembling tears that from emotion start, 

[64] 



CLIFTON CHURCH 

When dimpled hands and rosebud lips are cold, 
When o'er her breast, from whence we drew our 

life, 
A mother's hands, no longer warm, we fold. 
Is it for naught our years with pain are rife? 

Tell me not so, else would this churchyard seem 
Merely a place for storing useless lives; 
See where the roses speak the mourner's dream. 
Some memory dear that tender token gives. 

Peace ! Such a peace serene o'erbroods this place 
That melancholy Death for once seems fair, 
Lo ! o'er the churchclock's numbers slowly pace 
Time's pointed fingers. Hark! the listening air 

Vibrates with sound of nine slow, measured beats; 
Over the graves fast gathering gloom descends. 
And all the light, drawn westward, now retreats; 
High thro' grey Heaven the climbing Moon up- 
wends. 

Light from the Darkness! Vast star-dusted 

fields, 
Hidden by Day's illumined vault, appear — 

[65] 



CLIFTON CHURCH 

Maybe the darkness we call Death reveals 
Soul-lighted realms unknown, unthought of here 

Wherefore I count the dead most happy, since 
Wide is the knowledge they, by Death, attain; 
Why at the thought of greater wisdom wince. 
If little loss includes the greater gain? 

Rest, outworn dusi: ! Yet, in thy resting, serve I 
Even this rose derives from thee its bloom. 
Lives are not vain that such an end reserve; 
This much I learn amid the gathering gloom! 



[66] 



AFTER VACATION 

(To "Sonnie"— D. O.) 

LET me think it over, now you are gone — 
I cherished those hours, every one. 
When your boyish laughter filled the air 
And broke my thought of pain and care. 

We walked together by woodland ways, 

I, and you with the bright, young face. 

With a faith undimmed in a world of joy. 

And the open heart and mind of a boy; 

I loved your face, so frank, so fair. 

Finding my own lost boyhood there. 

And your chatter was more than speech of men, 

Fresh from a world I knew again, 

A world where dreams work out to truth. 

And the golden age is the age of youth. 

The age of youth ! — I scarce have known 
The sweets of it — too soon upgrown 
In a world of men where life is fierce 

[67] 



AFTER VACATION 

And the kindly heart is the heart to pierce. 

O happy boy! was it with surprise 

You saw the tears come Into my eyes? — 

For your words were light as your heart, and so 

Y'ou questioned me, and wished to know 

What made me sad — and I could not say. 

Though my heart knew well In a furtive way 

And my arm drew tighter around your own, 

For something told me I stood alone. 

That between your years and mine there swept 

The flood of memory wherein slept 

The boy's fond dreams — such dreams as you 

Are dreaming yet, and finding true ! 

O red, young lips and rosy cheeks! 

My heart for Its long-lost boyhood seeks, 

Some echo of It rang In your voice. 

And hearing I could not help rejoice. 

And part of my love was love for you. 

And part for the dreams that have not come true. 



[68] 



HABBERLEY VALLEY 

DOWN in Habberley Valley the silver birches 
grow, 
And all the winding mossy ways are glistening In 

the sun, 
The birds are calling softly, and the fitful breezes 

blow — 
O come with me ! O come with me, before the 
day is gone ! 

There's oak and ash, and pine and fir, that clothe 
the Valley steeps. 

There's soft green grass and fairy ferns, and in 
the breathless noon 

I've seen the shady dell wherein Great Pan, wine- 
wearied, sleeps, 

And oft he holds strange revels there at night 
beneath the Moon. 

Down In Habberley Valley the silver birches 
grow, 

[69] 



HABBERLEY VALLEY 

And on a glorious Summer's day 'tis there I 

long to go — 

Young Cupid hides with his bow and arrows 

Down where the winding foothpath narrows, 

O loudly, loudly lilt the birds, and softly, softly 

hum the bees. 
And from morn till eve the butterfly wings among 
the whispering trees! 

Down In Habberley Valley I saw the Satyrs dance 

With woodland Nymphs and singing boys, their 
brows enchapleted 

With roses wild and ivy green. O many the love- 
lit glance 

They cast behind on seeing me ere through the 
wood they fled. 

There's song and sunshine mingling with the odour 

of the pines, 
And once I heard the flutes of Pan across the 

Valley calling, 
I've seen the trees In gowns of gold when the 

burning sun declines, 
And stood in silent reverie as the dusk was softly 

falling. 

[70] 



HABBERLEY VALLEY 

Down In Habberley Valley the silver birches 

grow, 
And high above the trees at night the stars are 
all aglow, 
The Moon glides softly with silver feet, 
The nightjar calls, and lovers meet. 
And slowly, slowly on they go like shadows in a 

moonlit land, 
And the trees they rustle and laugh, and then 
grow silent, they understand. 



Down in Habberley Valley a Poet stood alone 
And sighed to think of the sad world of turmoil 

whence he came. 
He breathed his spirit forth unto each flower and 

tree and stone. 
And all the fairy voices heard that called upon his 

name. 



There's many a song you have not sung, O poet of 

the World! 
But you are young, and love us yet with innocent 

delight, 

[71] 



HABBERLEY VALLEY 

O have you heard the bluebells ring and seen the 

roses curled, 
And drunk the nectar of the Gods, and found the 

Heart of Light? 

Down In Habberley Valley you'll hear the blue- 
bells ring 
With many a chiming peal of song when all the 
fairies sing, 
The bees in bass hum in monotone, 
The lark in alto sings alone, 
And sweetly, sweetly on the wind the woodland 

song is upward borne, 
O come and hear the choral chant we sing in the 
roseate Dawn! 

Down in Habberley Valley the shadows gently 

grow, 
And all around sweet voices blend their music with 

the wind, 
While down the pathways lightly flit the shades of 

long ago, 
O lover from the shadowland, perchance your 

love you'll find! 

[72] 



HABBERLEY VALLEY 

There's many a voice shall sing no more with 

earthly accents sweet, 
But you may hear the spirit song beneath the hush 

of night, 
Ah, lover in the moonlit land, who knows but you 

may meet 
With one long kiss, and one low sigh, and find the 

Heart of Light? 



Down In Habberley Valley the trees are weirdly 

still, 
There's not a breeze among the leaves that 
sleep In moonlight chill : 
The hooting owl, forgetting its prey, 
Shivers and longs for the sleep of Day, 
And quickly, quickly, beating hearts turn with the 

changing tide of Time, 
And a star sails forth on the sea of Heaven as all 
the planets chime. 

Down in Habberley Valley the silver birches grow. 
The air Is filled with the song of the birds and 
everything is gay, 

[73] 



HABBERLEY VALLEY 

O come with me and wander where the pine-tree 
branches throw 

A cooling shade for youth and maid upon a Sum- 
mer's day. 

There's many a tale you have not heard, O maid 

with magic eyes, 
Ah, you may hear a song more sweet than ever 

bird can sing, 
O let him take your hand in his and fill the air with 

sighs. 
And he with kisses on your cheeks red roses there 

shall bring. 

Down in Habberley Valley the cuckoo's two- 
fold voice 
Through all the air, from crag to crag, will call 
" Rejoice! Rejoice! " 
Your hearts will beat as never before. 
And Love shall teach you his golden lore, 
Most happy Love in woodland ways ! Sing out, 

O birds! Croon soft, O breeze! 
O ye pines and firs in cloistral groves, chant your 
most tuneful litanies ! 

[74] 



SHE MOVES, THE LADY OF MY LOVE 

SHE moves, the lady of my love, 
A vision of delight, 
And everything she touches seems 

To glory in her sight; 
A white rose is not fair as she, 

Her lips are poppy-red, 
And I have pressed them in delight 

Until their colour fled; 
Her throat is as a marble tower 

That guards the citadel 
Where are two hills of virgin snow 

That Love has loved so well. 
Ah ! ye who have not loved or seen 

The wonder of her breast, 
Nor ever found so warm and soft 

A refuge of deep rest. 
Nor felt her sweet, warm breath play o'er 

Your burled face and hair. 
Nor kissed the rose-red lips of love 

And worshipped one so fair — 

[75] 



THE LADY OF MY LOVE 

How can poor words have song enough 

To sing her grace aright — 
Is not the lady of my love 

A vision of delight? 
Her eyes are as twin torches in 

The heaven of her face, 
Her brow is white as ivory, 

And in her speech I trace 
The melodies which happy birds 

Have taught her in the ways 
Of sunny meadows filled with song 

Thro' golden summer days. 
Her hair is fragrant as the wind 

That kisses violet meads, 
And falls in tresses o'er the brow 

Where Love his welcome reads; 
Sweet as the rapture of the night 

Is that of waking day, 
And when together, hand in hand, 

We walk the woodland way, 
Her presence, like a breath of Spring, 

Calls forth the flowers to greet 
The happy glances of her eyes. 

And kisses of her feet. 

[76] 



THE LADY OF MY LOVE 

The birds, when she approaches nigh, 

Sing louder than before, 
How lavish seems the woodbine bush 

With all Its scented lore ! 
And sunnier are the sunny ways, 

And bluer are the skies. 
To match the sunshine of her face. 

The blueness of her eyes; 
And then I knew a secret sense 

She has of Nature's mind, 
For once methought I saw, but now 

I know my sight was blind: 
She opens up a wonderland 

Wherein we dally tread: 
The lily Is a mystery 

On which her soul has fed; 
She knows the secret of each flower 

Like any woodland elf, 
And tells me every secret, save 

The secret of herself, — 
And that I shall not crave, enough 

For me. In wonder bright. 
She moves, the lady of my love, 

A vision of delight. 

[77] 



APPASSIONATA 

SOMETIMES I wonder why I suffer so — 
A stranger's face, what could it mean for 
me? 
Once seen by most forgotten soon — ah, no ! 
For me those eyes, those lips will ever be 
The substance of the dreams that oft I dream. 
Your face attracted me, your voice rang clear, 
Your eyes were lustrous as sun-burnished pools, 
Your thought not of philosophies that bear 
The imprint of the academic schools — 
Therefore we spent the hours in vain delight, 
Riding the sparkling waves at early morn. 
Or playing tennis in the noon, while night 
Echoed with little loves that in our arms were 
borne. 

And now I make lament — the old lament, 
Your loveliness will fade, your youth will die. 
And so I shudder, knowing days that went 
Swiftly and gloriously, like all things, by; 

[78] 



APPASSIONATA 

It gives me pain to think that youth must fade, 

I sat and gloried in your eyes' soft gleam, 

I gazed and thanked the Deity who made 

Such glory for my heart to feast upon — 

Yet never once I spake to you of this. 

For you those days are dead, are dead and 

gone : 
For you, maybe, the moment held its bliss. 
Wherefore my joy is somewhat fraught with 

pain 
Knowing those days will never come again. 
Knowing that you will laugh, and live content, 
While all my days are passed in dreary banish- 
ment. 

Have I been born to live in vain — to make 
A god for memory's worship, only that? 
Will Beauty's fountain never flow and slake 
This thirsty soul of mine you wonder at? 
Oh, sometimes, such my love, I wish you dead 
That I may close your eyes, and kiss your 

mouth. 
And place upon my heart your handsome head, 
Perchance my thirsty soul would ease its drouth, 

[79] 



APPASSIONATA 

For then, unknowing, I might worship you — 
Which once I did In secret lest you knew. 

Ah! when we parted on our separate ways 
You little knew my pain — those happy days 
Were happy days for you, no more — to me 
They are as heirlooms, fraught with misery, 
For future years to hoard — when we are old, 
When Youth's fine glow is gone and all our days 
are cold. 

Oh! frail, sad heart that falls In Beauty's snare 
And locks Its love within a silent tomb, 
No words betray its utter grief — nor dare 
One look reveal its secret — 'tis my doom 
To suffer In mute agony nor speak 
The secrets those who love may to their loved 
ones break. 

Pass from me face that moves my lips to song, 
That fills my heart with sadness, fills these eyes 
With tears that are for you, to you belong, 
These tears you must not see lest you despise! 
What are my restless nights that see your face 
Shining through silent darkness unto you? — 

[80] 



APPASSIONATA 

Something unknown, unguessed, — yet / can 

trace 
Each subtlety of change, most sure and true — 
As when you smiled — I hold its magic yet, 
A radiance that never my fond heart will forget. 

Therefore my joy is somewhat fraught with 

pain 
Distilled from happy days recalled in vain; 
We met, we spoke, we parted, now with me 
The vision of your face Is dwelling constantly. 



[8i] 



LOVE'S SILENCE 

1HAVE not called you fair, 
True loverwlse, 
Nor praised your golden hair 

And heavenly eyes, 
Nor pressed you warm and close 

Against my breast — 
For all things such as those 
May naught attest; 

But I have dreamed of you 

In sleepless nights, 
Your speech has thrilled me through 

With sharp delights. 
And I have watched you move, 

With yearning heart — 
Passion of such deep love 

Could words impart? 

Ah! dearest one, I break 
All bonds of speech 

[82] 



LOVE'S SILENCE 

With deeper thought. O take 

My love, and teach 
Language no lips can speak, 

Only souls hear, 
My words are all too weak, 

Your love so dear ! 



[83] 



LA GLORIOSA DONNA 

(Beatrice) 



THOU art the dream of the beauty dreamed, 
O lady fair, 
Radiant as the Moon hath seemed 
When all the breathless sky lay bare, 
Bathing Itself In the glorious light; 
Thou art the Moon of the poet's night 
Once dark with care. 



II 

The stars look not In the Moon's bright face, 

O lady mine ! 
They hide themselves In abysmal space; 
And so mine eyes look not In thine 
Lest they should burn with a fervour found 
In the sanctuary of a love profound 

And a joy divine. 

[84] 



LA GLORIOSA DONNA 

III 

Wert thou the Helen that brought to Troy 

The Greeks of old, 
And filled with passion the beauteous boy? — 
Oh I marvel not that men were bold : — 
One smile of thine would be balm for death, 
And thy praise would take the dying breath 

Ere the lips were cold. 



IV 

I wonder not that a poet loved 

Afar, in pain, 
Or that through Hell to Heaven he moved, 
And lived his life but a glimpse to gain 
Of the lady loved by a speechless boy; 
Mine eyes can worship thee, but my joy 

Seeks words in vain. 



V 

The thought unuttered, like music, dies 

In a pulsing dream, 
For I dare not trust nor voice nor eyes 

[85] 



LA GLORIOSA DONNA 

In fear that a word or a look would seem 
Less than the meaning It should convey, 
And I pale as a star in the light of Day, 
'Neath thine eyes' soft gleam! 



[86] 



ANDROMACHE 

(For Israel Zangwill) 

THE Still midnoon was come, and all the 
steeps 
Lay somnolent within the swimming air 
That breathed among the trees with heavy sighs 
Scented with asphodel. Beyond the meads, 
Now shadowless, the beechwoods, tressed with 

vine, 
Lifted their branches in the golden light, 
And where the cloud-capped hill with many 

streams 
Shone golden-veined, the leafy mountain ash 
Motionless slept; the moan of many doves, 
Within the poplars grown athwart the sky. 
Was breeze borne with the scent of lilac fields. 

Along the border of the stream-girt plain, 
Leaving the city gates, a woman came 
Threading the olive woods by primrose paths 
That led to Thetis' Close (where Peleus once 

[87] 



ANDROMACHE 

In olden days brought Thetis to his bed), 
And through the sunny woodland up she toiled 
Towards the fountain by the elm trees' shade 
Where women came with pitchers all day long. 

Slowly along the step ravine she clomb 
As one deep-stricken to the heart with woe, 
And all her robes hung fold on fold about 
Her grief-expressive figure, dark, enswathed 
Save where the ivory brow gleamed forth above 
Two eyes that were as wells of sorrow where 
No sunlight ever glanced. Then as she moved. 
Her voice broke forth in sweetness, and the sigh 
Of welling tears ran o'er each pause, and all 
The woods were stilled as when a storm o'erclouds 
And thro' the brooding silence steals the wind. 

*' O mighty Zeus! Lord of the Courts of 

Heaven, 
I would thou hadst not spared me to this day, 
Nor led me captive to the land of Hellas, 
For who shall hail me now? I once was fair 
And drew the lordly Hector to my breast, — 
White-armed Andromache whose lovely brow, 

[88] 



ANDROMACHE 

Shining beneath fair tresses, knew the kiss 
Of Priam's son. Alas ! for I am she, 
Daughter of Action, Hector sought 
Throughout Hypoplacus where long I dwelt 
Loved of my sire and brothers seven. 

^'Ah! there 
He came and kissed me, called me by my name — 
* O fair, white-browed Andromache ! ' he said. 
Taking my hand in his heroic clasp. 
And drawing me to bliss upon his breast; 
And thence to lofty Ilium, where his sire 
Ruled over mighty Troas, I was led 
All envied of my beauty and my lord." 

She ceased and moved towards the beechwood's 

shade. 
There sate, and in the noon made sad complaint. 

" O mighty Zeus ! he was a lord of men — 
Strong-armed, high-browed, and leader in the 

field; 
Beloved of all, by me the best beloved. 
Who knew him more and loved him none the less. 

[89] 



ANDROMACHE 

Woe to the day that fickle-hearted Helen 
Came with her evil ways and luring eyes 
To wreak the fall of Ilium. When the plain 
Grew dark with armed Hellenes, he came forth, 
The great-souled Hector, seeking me, and there, 
Upon the high wall by the Scaean gates, 
He found me, with our babe Scamandrlus 
Rocked In the nurse's arms, wherein he shone 
More like a beauteous star than hapless babe. 

" O mighty Zeus, my heart Is breaking, hear! 

The lordly Hector took me In his arms 

And held me as I wept. For all his words 

Were sorrowful, as words of all farewells: 

And on his tongue a dreadful prophecy 

Foretold the end of married bliss, the end 

Of all the joys that make a husband dear; 

Of Death, and Ruin, when the lofty walls 

Of smitten Ilium crashed to earth. Whereon 

His eyes grew pitiful, his words grew sad 

And slow. He bade me venerate his name 

Who loved his country more than wife and babe, 

Holding the commonweal above his own; 

But I, with tearful pleadings, then besought 

[90] 



ANDROMACHE 

His pitiful thought towards me, of love bereft, 
And widowed of my lord and guardian soul; 
But all my words stayed not his stern resolve. 
With commendations sweet, he gave his son 
Into my sorrowing care, and bade me tend 
His training, to the end that men should praise 
The valour of the son above the sire. 
Then to my fragrant bosom low his brow 
Was bent in silence, and with soothing words 
He bade me go perform the homely tasks, 
And with one soul-surrendering farewell 
He turned, and went from sight for evermore." 

As the wind in the dark and raging night 

Wails thro' the rain-drenched woods, and slowly 

dies 
With fitful moans to silence, so her voice 
Came thro' the olives, o'er the sunlit sward 
And died unechoing in the sultry noon. 
Throwing the veil from off her moon-white brow 
And brushing back the tresses, with two eyes 
Whose passion lit the darkness of their woe. 
She lifted up her voice, and as she spake 
The startled birds flew out with glimmering wings. 
And sought the voiceless arbour of the pines. 

[91] 



ANDROMACHE 

'* O mighty Zeus ! would hate implacable 
Could hound to Hades him who slew my lord! 
I then would praise thy justice, for in truth, 
Wherefore do men reap victory and fame 
Because a thousand women mourn their lords 
Whose pale, unbosomed faces looked no more 
Upon their woe-worn features? Fatherless, 
Young children listen for their sires, and curse 
The dreaded name Achilles, whose sure spear 
Pierced thro* the heart of every Trojan dame. 
Divine Achilles, such his name of men. 
But all the venom of despair, the hate 
Of abject misery, I summon up. 
Nor words, nor imprecations breathed by ghouls 
Dwelling In Stygian darkness, hold the hate 
That labours in my heart tov/ards this man. 

" He slew my father, and with rapine foul 
O'erran his rich dominions, brought to ruin 
The sovereign city, lofty-gated Thebes. 
Moreover, of the Issue of my sire, 
His seven noble sons he slew; and I, 
The miserable wreckage of a line 
Illustrious In war, renowned In peace, 

[92] 



ANDROMACHE 

Beheld my butchered lord, with bleeding corse 
Dragged in the chariot's wake; and when the walls 
Of stricken Troy were sundered, from my arms 
The wailing babe was dashed to awful death." 

Here ceased her voice in sorrow, and the hair, 
Falling about her shoulders, veiled the face 
With anguish bowed, and when she spake again 
Her cheeks were pale, her eyes saw not, but 

glowed 
With wild intensity of boundless hate 
W^hose passion froze the blood within her cheeks 
And marbled all the face in speechless grief. 

'' Jove, and ye other gods, pursue with wrath 
Thro' Hades' dawnless gates this man whose foul 
Remorseless conquest widowed me of love. 
Hearken, ye gods ! I dwell a captive here 
Unransomed; to a base and loveless bed 
Forced with rude hands of Neoptolemus, 
The wolfish son begot of savage sire; 
And when my ravished limbs are freed at dawn 
They labour daily, on this toilsome steep, 
Carrying water from the fountain head. 

[93] 



ANDROMACHE 

Ye gods, I crave one mercy. Let me die 
That I may go to him whose lonely soul 
Waits comfortless by Lethe's songless shore; 
And in his glance the deathly glade shall smile 
Like sunlit meadows after springtide rain: 
The leafless trees shall blossom, and the birds 
Break forth in song, and they among the shades 
Who, shadowlike, move mournfully in gloom, 
Shall see a breaking light, breathe purer air, 
For radiant as a star engulfed in night 
My face will shine and seek him out, and we 
Together then shall sink in Lethe's flood 
Forgetting sorrow, for with him I know 
Where'er we dwell, Elysium will be." 



[94] 



TRIBUTE 

(For Edward J. O'Brien) 

NOT with the silence of the night, 
Nor with the gladness of the day 
But in that gentle, dusky light 
Which gathers when the western way 
Runs to a sea of burning gold 
You came to me, like eventide 
Whose soft and trailing clouds enfold 
Meadow and mere and mountain-side. 
Your voice was as a mountain rill, 
Silver-sweet as its music-fall 
When shadows creep and birds are still 
And the great moon reigns over all. 
Arrayed in wonder like the night. 
Stars In the heaven of your face. 
You came to me with love's delight 
And found in me a resting-place. 
I have known great and gracious things 
And worshipped beauty everywhere, 
Sunsets and ruins, swallows' wings 

[95] 



TRIBUTE 

Skimming the surface of the mere, 

Roses filled with the morning dew, 

The creamy cones of chestnut-trees. 

Wonderful chords that thrilled me through 

When thin white fingers swept the keys, 

Old houses and old English lawns 

And meadows with their shining streams, 

Dogs with great eyes and timid fawns. 

Chairs and old chests, and books and dreams 

Italy with her sunny squares 

And purple vineyards by the sea, 

The gay Piazza with Its wares 

In wax and wood and ivory. 

And all the colour and the noise; 

Or the Blue Grotto In whose pool 

Falls a swift shower of diving boys 

Unglrdled, silver-limbed and cool; 

Spain with her tales of old romance. 

Her dark-eyed womien fierce in love; 

That flower garden, southern France — 

I know these all, and yet above 

Their beauty and their charm you reign 

Supreme in glory like the moon 

O'er mountain mere and stream-girt plain, 

[96] 



TRIBUTE 

For in your eyes there Is the boon 
Which hearts grown weary of the sun 
Seek and rejoice In, the great calm 
That love abiding gives to one; 
Yet in my heart a faint alarm 
Still lingers, born of this new bliss. 
And I have fear lest you should know it 
To sing the rapture of your kiss 
You should have loved a better poet. 



[97] 



IN THE WOOD 

DEAR heart, through all the afternoon 
I slumbered where the woodland shade 
Was the deepest from the glare of June, 
And as the branches o'er me swayed 

Singing that old-world song which pines 

For ever sing, as If they found 

A solace In their murmured lines, 

I weaved strange fancies to the sound; 

And In each sigh I heard your sighs, 
And every whisper cried, " 'TIs I! " 
Until I seemed to feel your eyes 
Fall on me, for I know not why — 

Though you are dead, today I felt 
That union which of old we knew, 
The richness of your hair I smelt 
Until the greater wonder grew 

[98] 



IN THE WOOD 

That you were not, for, so It seemed, 
The years had brought no change since last 
Beneath the pine-trees' shade you dreamed 
With me that Future, now the Past. 

Who knows, dear heart, perchance you move 
Nearer In love than I In thought. 
And with these premonitions prove 
Love Is not far and comes unsought. 



[99] 



A CHILD'S EYES 

EYES of a child — twin worlds of light, 
What have ye seen that visions bright 
Still kindle with a Paradisal hue : 
Something retained of all the heavenly wonder, 

The glorious light, 
The realm ethereal that angels view. 

Where worlds are rent asunder: 
Something of these within remembered sight 
Make of them worlds of light? 

Yea, even so It must be, we are grown 

Heavy with pain and moan. 
That all the wonder of this wondrous world. 
The stars that, censor-v/ise. 
Swing down the vaulted Night, 
The glowing panorama of the skies 
When through the Dawn's wide portal sweeps the 
Sun 
'Mid roseate clouds unfurled, 
Ruling his realm of light, 
[loo] 



A CHILD'S EYES 

Yea, even these no longer stir the heart, 
No longer find reflection In our eyes, 
Nor wake the wonder of unknowing days, 
When, with unasking, unperturbed gaze, 
A child's wide eyes, 
Disdainful of being wise, 
Something of all their glory to the earth Impart. 

Therefore I voyage In thy fancy-bark. 
Through thy great wonders dark. 
Knowing they mirror all the heaven that glows 
(Since even wayside pools can mirror Heaven, 
How much to thee Is given!) 
Like an unfurled rose. 
Petal on petal, fragrant with the wind 
That blows o'er all mankind; 
And lo ! with sails outblown. 
My swift bark wings o'er seas whose undertone 
Echoes the chanting of that Paradisal zone 
Whence lately, life-elated. 
With joy precipitated. 
Thou, little child, caught'st up those wondrous 
skies 
Into thy magic eyes, 

[lOl] 



A CHILD'S EYES 

Bringing to earth the glory they had seen, 
Retaining still the lustre of what they once had 
been! 

On thro' the mirrored pools of thy reflective sight, 
On, o'er the bar of Heaven, the swift bark sped. 
Thro' countries of the Dead, 
The Dead so dead in that, as yet unborn, 

They wait for Morn, 
Even as thou didst once, in state forlorn. 
When at the summoning trumpet call of Life, 
The curtain rising on the Stage of Strife, 
With yearning limbs, at last 
The dread inaction past. 
Robed in prenatal glory down to Earth 
They joyfully will sing to wombs of human birth; 

On thro' the land where hands unseen have 
wrought 
The rainbow's glory and the poet's thought, 
Upward I sailed, still sailed, lo! Paradise 1 
The argent-gated City set with stars 
And sunshine-fretted bars; 
Thence, ere they lifted for my passing through — • 

[102] 



A CHILD'S EYES 

'' Say! What most treasurest 
On Memory's palimpsest?" 
In angel-throated accents came the cry: 
And I, 
Thought not nor knew, 
But straightway answered, 
Whereat the bars upsped, 
" O Keeper of the Gates of Paradise, 
A child's bright eyes ! 
For visions of this realm they hold most true I " 

Then In great glory, loud, hosanna-wise, 
Rang all the quivering skies — 

" Light In a baby's eyes 

Cometh from Paradise ! " 
And thus In joined anthem sang the stars, 
Thus all the ways of Heaven rang with song. 

Till I, among 
The diapason music of the swinging firmament, 

With fear downbent. 

And lo ! with glow 
Of steadfast light and unperturbed gaze, 
Once more with great amaze, 
My waking sense outdreamed its dream and 

saw — 

[103] 



A CHILD'S EYES 

No starry plains of Heaven, no Paradise, 
No Court where sat enthroned the Giver of the 
Law, 

No ! greater my surprise — 

Only a child's bright eyes ! 

How little and how mean 
The fruits of those who glean 
The harvest fields of knowledge: scholarship 
Fades in the sight of that unthinking glance 
'Neath which, as in a trance, 
The Universe unvows her vestalship. 
And from her unseen face lets fall the veil 
'Neath which the glimmering form, but half 
discerned, 
Lay hid from one who yearned. 
Who cried, with passionate craving for the truth, 
While swift, onpassing years with little ruth, 
Hearing the cry, beheld him strive and fall; 
And lo! when Science with her ordered arts 
Had striven, with the cunning she Imparts, 
And, baffled, stood before the fine intricacies 
Of this Earth's mysteries, 
A little child with sunshine In his smile, 

[104] 



A CHILD'S EYES 

With glint of roguish wile, 

With one low cry of Innocent delight, 
Opened his eyes so bright 
And saw the rainbow's beauty, while the seer 

Saw nothing there, 
For Knowledge, specious Critic, 
Shattered the rainbow's glory to colours analytic! 

Therefore unto the child, methlnks, is given 

The insight into Heaven, 
For we are lost to wonder in this world, 
While in our facts upcurled. 
We live as lives the grub within the rose, 

Eating the beauty from the heart of things 
Nor heed wherein the secret of it springs: 
Yet eyes, In which 
The rainbow's glory lives again, receive 
The impress of the wonder they perceive. 
Nor guess the secret of it all, nor grieve; 
Wherefore am I, 
Unknowing, but observant, greatly rich. 
Become the treasure-house of Beauty's store 
That, more and more. 
The wonders that delight my seeing eye, 
May therein He : 

[105] 



A CHILD'S EYES 

So thus to keep the rapture of the child, 
Whose simple heart with Beauty is beguiled, 
Most happily beguiled! 

Once on a time, 
That sad, all-suffering time. 
When presaging song had filled my heart with 
woe, 
I chanced to go, 
A forlorn songster, smutted with the grime 
Of the most heartless City of the World, 
Sickened with undeserving long neglect. 
Into a place where spread 
On lettered shelves the great, undying dead. 

Whose singing souls, in pilgrimage elect, 
Still wing them down the ringing ways of Time, 
With Fame's immortal banners o'er them furled: 

And taking down a vellum-covered book, 
I sought a nook 
Wherein to scent the fragrance of its rhyme; 
Ah, then how shall I tell this thing so great. 
What song, what lyric rapture magical 
Can fitly tell an act grown tragical 

[io6] 



A CHILD'S EYES 

With cherished fondness In my foolish heart? — 
This little act beyond all estimate, 
For 'twas at lowest ebb of Fortune's flood 
A child Intuitively understood, 

A little child that In most tragic-wise 
Looked with her big wide eyes, 
Then spake, and changed my Hell to singing 
Paradise ! 

O voice ! O child's sweet voice ! 
That made my heart rejoice. 
That shattered all the bonds that bound me in 
despair. 
Beside my chair, 
A fairy book you showed me with delight, 
A little trusting, wide-eyed fairy wight 
With golden hair — 
No Titian's Madonna e'er embraced 

A child more fair, 
More sweet, more innocent, more angel-faced! 

Therefore, methinks, unto the child is given 

The Insight into Heaven, 
Nor solely that, but into human hearts, 

[107] 



A CHILD'S EYES 

How otherwise that messenger divined 
A human voice grown kind 
In multitudinous solitude I pined? 
Yea, Love itself imparts 
To the clear freshness of a child's young eyes; 

The newborn child retains 
The undimmed vision of the heavenly plains ! 

Eyes of a child — twin worlds of light, 
What have ye seen that visions bright 
Still kindle with a Paradlsal hue — 
Something retained of all the heavenly wonder, 
The glorious light 
Of realms ethereal that angels view, 
Where worlds are rent asunder 
And God rides In the thunder? — 
Something of these within remembered sieht 
Make of thine eyes twin worlds of most celestial 
light! 



[io8] 



THE DARK YEARS 



CHARING CROSS 

ALL through the night In silence they come 
and go, 
The Red Cross cars with headlights low, 
And maimed humanity on stretchers lain 
Glides down the streets of London — while I stand 
Watching this slow processional of pain. 
All through the night unending flows the stream 
Whence now and then a weary, bloodless hand 
Answers the greeting of the silent crowd; 
A pale and stricken face smiles back again 
Upon the kind, dim faces that throng as in a 
dream. 



Over them as they journey, patiently bowed 
A nurse keeps watch In fear lest now at last 
The fluttering spirit leave the battered cage, 
And, eager for eternity, slip past 
The guardian tending the poor, broken frame 
With Its disc and number and stencilled name. 

[Ill] 



CHARING CROSS 

And ais I watch, a rebel thought 

Stirs In my mind, for strange It seems 

That down this highway of pain unending 

There flow the streams 

Of human traffic homev/ard brought. 

Broken and useless, marred with terrible scars, 

Eyeless and limbless and shattered, while under 

the stars 
Flow other streams that, outward wending. 
Carry the youth of the nation In splendid vigour — 
And those streams flow Into these at the touch of 

a trigger! 



Long months of training that splendid humanity 

needed. 
The toil and brain of a nation evolved It, the 

wealth 
Of the wide world's meadows and mines was 

brought for its use. 
And with careful eyes and hands it was weeded 

and weeded 
Until it was virile with courage and perfect 

health; 

[112] 



CHARING CROSS 

And here is the end of It all, and we count the 

loss 
Recording the glory, forgetting this human refuse 
Left by extravagant war — borne away in the 

night 
Swiftly and silently. God! here again at a cross 
Crucified man in a dark world dies; the sight 
Burns to the brain, and I cry, as once One cried — 
"My God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken 

me? " — then 
I watch with dumb anguish the endless procession 

of men. 
The remnants picked up from the waste in the 

fields; they who died 
Flow no more in the stream, they can rest; and 

only it matters 
That Science should skilfully mend what it skil- 
fully shatters. 



[113] 



ECLIPSE 

HOW shall we sing, love, in these days 
When darkness covers all the earth. 
And Death alone has splendid praise. 
How can our dreams find happy birth? 

There Is no music In the wood 
But mocks the heavy heart of me, 
This Is the age of Iron and blood 
And sisters none hath Charity. 

Out of the darkness Into light 
At dawn the sons of men will come, 
Then shall begin our tireless fight. 
We shall not In that hour be dumb; 

There is a question to be asked, 

There Is an answer to be given, 

And traitors who shall stand unmasked. 

And new worlds made from old worlds riven. 

[114] 



FUTILITY 

THEY send me, Charles, long letters on your 
death. 
Full of fair phrases culled from poetry 
That do not blind me — let them save their 

breath; 
The nectared lies of immortality, 
The sounding rhetoric, the pompous phrase. 
The talk of supreme sacrifice, the great 
Reward — what are these 'gainst your withered 

days. 
Your dear lost face, the squalor of your fate? 
That you were brave I know, but still you clung 
To life that meant so much ; they say you cried 
In that last hour feeling you were so young. 
And desperately fought for life — and died. 
These letters, Charles, they mock me with their 

lies. 
Their borrowed phrases that belittle life 
And love and laughter — I can see your eyes 
As once they glowed, your body like a knife 

[115] 



FUTILITY 

Tempered and flashing in a summer sea, 

Or hear your voice enraptured over books, 

Or in the bathroom singing merrily 

At early morn, and days in river nooks 

And tennis sets — these memories all seem 

Like ghosts that haunt your room now you are 

gone. 
And make me think your end is but a dream. 
How can it be the end — at twenty-one? 
But when I read these letters, then I know 
You will not come again, nor does their praise 
Lighten the heaviness of this great blow, 
I cannot kiss your brow, nor see the place 
Where they have left you; as they write of fame, 
Your " splendid gift," my only thought is this — 
What will they care ten years hence for your 

name, 
Who cares a damn who died at Salamis? 



[ii6] 



THE DAYS OF OLD 

THEY are gone — the friends I had, 
Through the day, alone and sad. 
Through the places where we met 
I walk, dreaming of them yet; 
And the voices once so dear 
Never break upon my ear; 
All are gone — no voices call, 
No familiar footsteps fall. 

Friends of mine, friends of mine. 



They are gone and with them went 

All the happy days we spent; 

In the cafe or the street 

There are left no friends to greet 

With the cheery words of old, 

And the empty places hold 

Each a ghost of memory 

That most faintly smiles at me; 

Friends of mine, friends of mine. 

[117] 



THE DAYS OF OLD 

They are gone, and I am left 
Like a thing of Hfe bereft, 
Holding dear the things they said — 
Treasured things now they are dead; 
And at night the old refrain 
Rises from their throats again, 
And from battlefields they rise 
With the old light in their eyes. 

Friends of mine, friends of mine. 

They are gone — some will return, 

But for some in vain I yearn, 

Death has claimed their swift young lives, 

And their fame alone survives; 

In the night-time oft I cry 

To the unrelenting sky — 

O dead comrades, dear and true. 

Would that now I slept with you. 

Friends of mine, friends of mine. 



[Ii8] 



THE RETURN 

PROUD to be hers, of England, war-worn, 
shattered, 
Yet holding up their heads in regal poise. 
They will return, her death-forsaken boys, 
Triumphant, though the ranks are scarred and 

scattered 
Beyond formation evermore, so battered 
And broken, memories only, swept like toys 
In disarray — yet once with mighty noise, 
With drums they marched away when Honour 

mattered. 

When Honour mattered! Now returning, these, 
How shall our Honour stand, our duty seem 
To those who in the conflict kept a dream 
Sacred, a thought of meadows, pools and trees 
Of homeland — shall this England, that is ours 
By their great strength, reward not their spent 
pow'rs? 

[119] 



INHERITANCE 

DEAD statesmen, prophets, poets, princes, 
kings. 
And long dumb generations of this land 
Who gave no less the labour of the hand, 
And strength of sinew, those just offerings 
You made are ours, this generation springs 
From dreams that rose within you when you 

scanned 
The future and with valiant purpose planned 
Our large inheritance of splendid things. 

We are the heirs of greatness, for our blood 

Is regal with the dynasty of Fate, 

We must not fail those we perpetuate 

Nor check the purpose of that swelling flood 

Which sweeps through time down hills of History 

To Freedom in world-wide humanity. 



[120] 



THE DELIVERER 

NO star will herald him, no trumpets blare, 
The age that gives him birth shall hardly 
know 
It travails for his sake, nor watch him grow 
To greatness; yet the agony it bare 
Hath formed him, and a providential care 
Moulded his mind with great events; the flow 
Of adverse currents caught him, and the blow 
That shook the nation wakened a spirit rare. 

His eyes are lit with Hope, his heart has heard 
Harmony triumphing where Tumult reigns, 
And Truth, traduced, speaks from his mouth the 

word 
That is not shaped for dual ends, nor feigns 
Construction while It undermines. No bird 
Hails Dawn with surer flight than he sustains! 



[121] 



ON SOME POLITICIANS OF THE 
PERIOD 

IS this the England of those glorious men 
Who wrought the charter of our liberty? 
Hampden, doth not thy spirit rise again 
In wrath against this heavier tyranny, 
And thou, O Cromwell, swift to answer when 
Liberty was Imperilled, wilt thou be 
Silent In this dark hour, nor Milton's pen 
Command to write thy thunderous decree? 

For England Is a land oppressed where breed 
The vultures of the law, a brood that cries 
Over the living flesh whereon they feed; 
Humanity, Immersed In blood and lies. 
Pollutes the air of Heaven with Its stench, 
And Death strides gaily on from trench to trench. 



[122] 



LIBERTY IMPERILLED 

NOT without cause, just and unshakeable, 
Will we surrender up the cherished prize 
Of individual liberty, so well 
And nobly held; for if the future lies 
In danger yet no warrant to despise 
Ancestral freedom, power invincible, 
Moulding our nation's form, doth yet arise — 
Freedom alone can hold the force of Hell. 

Therefore in British hearts this day the thought 
Of mighty heritage shall make us calm 
Amid tumultuous conflict, and maintain 
Forces unchallenged, victories unbought 
Of craven minds coerced by war's alarm. 
Whose madness wrecks a world to count a gain. 



[123] 



DAWN 

THIS Is our Dawn, our Day! Are we not 
blessed 
Whose eyes behold this miracle of Time, 
This swift transition from the filth and grime 
That choked the body of a world oppressed. 
Which Custom bound, Convention overdressed 
And fell Tradition drugged? — a pantomime 
Of puppets dancing In the yellow lime, 
Wealth's minions In a farce by Fate suppressed. 

Delivered from that Night, now we are men, 
Creation Is within our hands! the vision 
Dreamed In the darkness will rise up again 
From ruins of a sick world's dead derision, 
And Youth shall know Its hour! Youth that on 

Death 
Has looked and turns to Life with quickened 

breath ! 



[124] 



I WILL ARISE 

(For Holbrook Jackson) 

1WILL arise. 
Too long has the night been over land, 
For, the terror departing, the dawn is at hand, 
The morning skies 
Tremble from pearl into red. 
And the growing light 
Awakens a world that was dead. 

On the face of the world let the dawn break, 

Oh never again 

Shall this midnight of madness return. 

The dumb anguish, the pain 

Unforgotten with letters of fire that brand and 

burn — 
Not these, O Lord, not these be ours again. 

We have suffered that Youth should be taken 
And spent as a breath, 

[125] 



I WILL ARISE 

We knew that we gambled with Life, we con- 
sorted with Death, 

And prayed for the dawn, when the reason should 
cry — 

" Great spirit of Man, awaken! 

Or evermore die ! " 

Then in his heart each man said low — 

" Many and many, in quenchless nobility ever 

They marched with a wonderful light in their 

eyes. 
With great courage aglow 
They arise and depart and never, never 
Return to the hearts for whom they made sacri- 
fice." 

I will arise. 

For it shall not be that this gift of Youth 

Be squandered and scattered as sand 

For redemption of Truth; 

The flame that from Ignorance sprang and by 

Hatred was fanned, 
Shall it burn for ever across a shrivelled land? 

[126] 



I WILL ARISE 

Night that was dark with such hatred, the Dawn 

blows cold, 
The fire of conquest dies, the unbridled lust 
Sickens with surfeit, the fields enfold 
Millions that fell in the clamour and now are dust; 
And they who wait in thy darkness and ceaseless 

pray. 
They are older than years. 
Their sleepless eyes 

Keep vigil, and tearless, having shed all tears, 
They wait, and waiting say — 
" In that dawn with confession to make I will 

arise." 

Youth that has died with such wonderful grace, 
Young limbs that ran lightly in deadly ways. 
Is there nothing bequeathed immortally ours 
Save this — in a maddened world, as a tiger de- 
vours 
The deer in the glade, implacable Hate devoured 
Your beauty, and left but a race deflowered? 

Yet Spring when it comes will seem yours, 
The immutable grace of the earth will recall you 
again, 

[127] 



I WILL ARISE 

The flooded meadow, soft twilight, the lamp in- 
doors, 

The chair and the chessboard, the unfinished book 

Turned down at a page where Fate wrote 
" Finis " — ah ! pain 

That sears the heart betrayed by a casual look. 

The new world In the rayless night 

Lies somewhere, as sure as the song of the bird, 

As the sun whose light 

And warmth fail never the seed in the deep earth 

stirred; 
And since by the folly of man, by his blundering 

thought 
This tribulation, this hell was conceived and 

brought 
To deadly fruition of purpose that holds him in 

terror, 
The dawn is ours to herald; confessing error, 
Redeemed by Youth's most splendid sacrifice. 
We will arise. 

The dead in the valley sleep, the dawn-wind 

blows, 
Beautiful sleepers are they whose names none 

knows, 

[128] 



I WILL ARISE 

Whose memory burns fainter through the years 
That pass until a generation grows 
Which cares not If they late or early slept; 
But I have kept 

Under my anguish, deep in a well of tears, 
Springs of grief that will dry not, that will flood 
At every slight neglect of future years. 
And when their sacrifice stirs not the blood 
And some make question of this stricken time, 
Daring to doubt the wisdom of the price. 
Lord, Thou shalt see then with what wrath su- 
blime 
In witness of their faith I will arise I 



[129] 



LUSITANIA 

SAILOR, what do you see that you stand 
With quivering lips and trembling hand, 
For the sea Is calm and the sky is clear. 
What do you fear? 

*' Sailor, why are you dumb, the sea 
Is soft with the summer days to be, 
The gulls flash by in the sunlit air. 
Why do you stare? " 

" Oh, look in the sea if you would learn, 
For this is the day the dead return, 
The murdered women and children rise 
With pitiful cries. 

" Their white hands beckon us from the wave. 
They never rest In their moving grave, 
They sigh their woes to the moaning deep, 
And never sleep. 

[130] 



LUSITANIA 

*' They wait for an end which they know Is sure, 
Then they will rest and rise no more ; 
Vengeance is mine — they heard God say — 
/ will repay J* 



[131] 



WATCHMEN OF THE NIGHT 

LORD of the seas' great wilderness, 
The light-grey warships cut the wind, 
The headland dwindles less and less, 

The great waves, breaking, drench and blind 
The stern-faced watcher on the deck, 
While England fades Into a speck. 

Afar on that horizon grey 

The sleepy homesteads one by one 

Shine with their cheerful lights as day 
Dies In the valley and Is gone. 

While the new moon comes o'er the hill 

And floods the landscape, white and still. 

But outward 'mid the homeless waste 

The battle fleet held on Its way; 
On either side the torn seas raced, 

Over the bridge blew up the spray; 
The quartermaster at the wheel 
Steered through the night his ship of steel. 

[132] 



WATCHMEN OF THE NIGHT 

Once, from a masthead, blinked a light — 
The Admiral spoke unto the Fleet; 

Swift answers flashed along the night. 

The charthouse glimmered through the sleet; 

A bell rang from the engine-room, 

And, ere it ceased — the great guns' boom. 



Then thunder through the silence broke 
And rolled along the sullen deep; 

A hundred guns flashed fire and spoke, 
Which England heard not In her sleep 

Nor dreamed of, while her fighting sons 

Fed and fired the blazing guns. 

Dawn broke In England, sweet and clear, 
Birds, in the brake, the lark in heaven 

Made musical the morning air. 

But distant, shattered, scorched and riven, 

Gathered the ships — r aye, dawn was well 

After the night's dark, raging hell. 

But some came not with break of light, 
Nor looked upon the saffron dawn; 

[133] 



WATCHMEN OF THE NIGHT 

They keep the watch of endless Night, 
On the soft breast of ocean borne. 
O waking England, rise and pray 
For sons who guard thee night and day. 

ScAPA Flow, May, 191 6. 



[134] 



THE DOVER PATROL 

WE are the grey destroyers, 
The hornets of the Fleet; 
The tall ships, our employers, 

Disdain our lonely beat. 
Through night and day we prowl about, 
Take one turn In and one turn out, 

Not very far from Dover, 
Through every hour of the twenty-four 
We hang about the Huns' back door — 
Lord! what a life for a young sea rover! 



We make no claim to beauty, 
The big guns know us not; 

We never dress for duty — 
One suit Is all we've got. 

We oil ourselves, for speed's our role. 

We'd race aught floating to the Pole 
And back again to Dover! 

Yet every hour of the twenty-four 

[135] 



THE DOVER PATROL 

We bar the dismal Huns' back door — 
Lord! what a life for a young sea rover! 

We barter with the chances 

That snatch our living breath, 
For danger so entrances 

We run full speed to death; 
*' The Lords of the Admiralty regret 

That H.M.S. " — and then forget 

The T.B.D. from Dover. 
Yet every hour of the twenty-four 
Somebody watches the Huns' back door — 
Lord! what an end for a young sea rover! 

Dover Straits, December, 1916. 



[136] 



LINES ON A PORTRAIT 
OF A MIDSHIPMAN KILLED IN ACTION 

A BOY'S face wherein beauty lies 
As In all things untouched by age, 
A waking wonder In those eyes 

That scarce had looked on Life's first page, 
And all that beauty and that grace 
For ever gone through Time and Space I 

When last I saw those lips they laughed, 
Those eyes were lit with sunshine then. 

Who guessed a sudden, bitter draught 
Would find in you a man 'mid men, 

That strength could In such frailty lie, 

And youth with such high courage die? 

I do not ask why unto you 

So brief a span of happy days 
Was given — for there was much to do, 

To see, to suffer, ere the praise 

[137] 



LINES ON A PORTPIAIT 

And pain of Life were yours, through years 
Of love, and happiness, and tears. 

I only know that we who move 

Through heat of noon to shadowed hours 
Covet your peace, and oft reprove 

The chance that will not make it ours; 
Not yours to know the failing strength. 
The creeping of the shadow's length. 

For ere the splendour of your noon, 
Ere beauty had unfolded quite. 

In eagerness you sought full soon 
To part the curtain of our Night, 

And now you know — perhaps, dear lad, 

Your only pain that we are sad. 

It may be heaven with your laughter 
Rings, and is filled with youthful noise, 

And we who wearily come after 
Shall be amazed to hear a boy's 

Glad greeting, and In your bright face 

Find of that battle-rage no trace. 



[138] 



VIGIL 

(For Francis Grierson) 

WHEN daylight fades and darkness creeps 
Over the wide and shuddering sea, 
Wreathed In mist, like wandering ghosts, 
The silent greyhounds guard the coast 
While England sleeps. 



What can the landsman know of the deeps, 
And the long, lone watch In the tense, dark night; 
Sleepless vigil of bloodshot eyes. 
The firm, set jaw of the man who dies 
While England sleeps? 



The loud wind moans, and the dark storm leaps 
Over the waste of the foam-flecked waves, 
Thunder roars from the throats of steel. 
In deathly throes the doomed ships reel. 
While England sleeps. 

[139] 



VIGIL 

When the white arm of the pale dawn swept 
Over the rim of the barren sea, 
No sign remained of the battle fought, 
The heroes dead, the victory bought 
While England slept. 



[140] 



A NAVAL NURSERY RHYME 



SING ; 
Hi 



IING a song of submarines, a U-boat full of 
'uns, 
A homeward-bound old trader with ever-ready 

guns; 
The chief was in the engine-room, the skipper at 

the wheel — 
A periscope, a smooth track, a shell of polished 
steel. 

Sing a song of submarines, the skipper swore an 

oath ; 
It's '' Hard to Port ! Full Speed Ahead ! " He 

rams her, nothing loath; 
The King was in the Council-room, the Queen 

was with him too, 
The skipper wears a medal and — there's food 

for me and you. 

MiLFORD Haven, March, 1918. 



[141] 



THE AIRMEN 

ZEUS, with the old gods all at play, 
Has lost the realm he ruled so long, 
For younger gods are born today 

Whose new-fledged wings are swift and strong; 
So Zeus, his kingdom overrun. 

Has packed his thunderbolts away 
And seeks a new place in the sun. 



[142] 



PRAYER FOR THE PILOT 

LORD of Sea and Earth and Air, 
Listen to the Pilot's prayer — 
Send him wind that's steady and strong, 
Grant that his engine sings the song 
Of flawless tone, by which he knows 
It shall not fail him where he goes; 
Landing, gliding, in curve, half-roll — 
Grant him, O Lord, a full control, 
That he may learn in heights of Heaven 
The rapture altitude has given. 
That he shall know the joy they feel 
Who ride Thy realms on Birds of Steel. 



[143] 



THE NEUTRAL ZONE 

SAID Death: " This Is an Insult grave, 
That men should fly as birds and dare 
Transgress the boundaries I gave; 

It shall not be! " Then through the air 
Swept down, on vengeance sworn. 

Said Life: " It Is a neutral zone, 
I bade them neither Yea nor Nay.'' 

Cried Youth: '* I claim It for my own! " 

Death heard and watched, then turned away 
Powerless 'neath such scorn. 



[144] 



LIFE 

THEY do not live who only know 
The dull procession of Life's flow, 
They have no faith who never 
Risk all, and in one hour of youth 
Reach the subliminal self where Truth 
Floods light and crowns endeavour. 

They do not die who find in death 
The great adventure, the first breath 

Whence came this life from God: 
Who, taking wings, laugh down at earth, 
Leap skywards, and with boyish mirth 

Run where the angds trod. 



[145] 



THOUGHTS IN SPRING, 1916, WHILE 
EUROPE WAS AT WAR 

THROUGH all the afternoon the throbbing 
car 
Raced up the hills, and took the winding road, 
Past villages and hamlets clustering round 
The little churches standing In the peace 
Of country solitude, until we gained 
A valley where the river broadly flowed 
Along a track of silver, wending through 
Verdurous meadows where the brovv^sing kine 
Found pasturage and undisturbed peace; 
And there we paused, as though a spirit called. 
With the small voice of solitude, for rest; 
What sweet content breathed from the little vale ! 
It seemed the elemental strife which man 
Can ne'er subdue, found there no sure abode; 
And I, depressed, with thoughts too deep for 

words. 
Weighted with vague unrest. Intangible, 
As when one dreams and on the morrow finds 

[146] 



THOUGHTS IN SPRING, 1916 

But shadowy conception of the things 

Substantial In imagination — drew 

Apart from those who walked with me, their 

hearts 
Unshadowed with regret, their voices raised 
In joyful accents, for I could not join 
With their light-hearted gaiety, but felt 
The burden of the time weigh down my soul, 
Checking the generous flood of happiness. 



Below me In the valley, towards the verge 

Of the high hills, from whence the splendrous sun 

Poured forth in golden flood, the village lay 

With warm red roofs, with spirals of blue smoke 

Taking their upward course among the trees 

Where thrush and blackbird and the linnet vied 

In rapturous welcome to the Spring; above, 

Lost in the unclouded blue of this fair day, 

A solitary lark sang out, as one 

Enamoured with his voice, which hath no art 

But only wild desire; upon the hill 

A cottage window, like a burnished shield, 

Caught up the radiant sun, and as the day 

Slowly declined towards eventide, the light 

[147] 



THOUGHTS IN SPRING, 1916 

Drew westward through vermilion bars, and 

glowed, 
And changed and waned until the shadowy veil 
Of noiseless eve fell over plain and hill; 
Around me in the hedgerows, where the buds 
Gave promise of long days of leafiness, 
The happy birds sang their last requiem, 
And over all the countryside peace reigned. 

But in the silence all my thoughts were turned 
To where no eventide brought peace, no dark 
Gave labour pause, but only deeper strife 
And countless horrors moving in black hordes 
With stalking Death, Discord and speechless 
Fear. 

O God who formed this world, with countless 

gifts 
Bestowed the changing hours, who filled the dawn 
With matin song of birds, who blest the day 
With labour in the open fields, the night 
With soft refreshing slumber, and o'erhung 
With countless stars the spaces of the sky 
Whereby the consciousness of man should feel 

[148] 



THOUGHTS IN SPRING, 1916 

The thrill and mystery when beauty wakes 

Slowly to birth in Life's vast harmony — 

Has Thou despaired, withdrawn Thyself from 

this 
Dark world where Chaos rules, and millions 

wage 
A war for some deep rights, some purpose held 
Inviolate from change? Dear God! in life 
Is not the struggle fierce enough, the pangs 
Of wild despair, vain hopes and shattered dreams, 
Sufficient for the misery of man. 
That all the earth in Honour's name should be 
Saddened with human blood, and groan with 

war — 
All that dark butchery which, with banners brave. 
And martial music, stalks the land and draws 
The praise of the unhappy ones whose woe 
Is gilded with the glory of great deeds; 
For this hath Science won her victories, 
And vanquished fell disease, outstamped the 

plague 
And placed within the hands of man the power 
To rule the elements, girdle the globe. 
Conquer the air, annlhlliate all space 

[149] 



THOUGHTS IN SPRING, 1916 

And time — that Death might loom more om- 
inous, 
And Hell, with new inventive force disgorge 
Fresh horrors beyond dreams' imagining? 
Nay, 'tis a false corruption of the mind 
Too avaricious grown, that holding dear 
Power and wealth and territory stakes 
A nation's happiness on one wild chance 
Of ruthless acquisition for the few, 
And basely doth appeal in Right's fair guise 
To those who answer when their Country's name 
Is challenged; thus in honour do they die. 
Nor ask the cause — these heroes, poor, obscure 
In Life's unnoticed walks where toil and want 
Crush out the finer feelings, hold subdued 
The spirit which at danger's call is quick 
To move and fight for some faint privilege 
Scarcely observed in time of peace, but now. 
When danger threatens, high advanced in claim 
Of act reciprocal; and all the world 
Thus answers, doing that it loathes, yet held 
In bondage of false service which betrays 
The highest ends of life and liberty. 
Thus nation wars with nation, and the earth 
Groans with the carnage; desolation dwells 

[1501 



THOUGHTS IN SPRING, 1916 

Naked throughout the land, and Want's chill 

touch 
Withers the children's happiness; the homes 
Resound no longer with loved voices, Death 
Stands by the thresholds where the broken hearts 
Mourn o'er the relics of departed joy. 

my sad country ! 'tis for thee I mourn, 
Seeing this misery of war's victories ! 

The conquests which are but embannered lies 

And bring no solace to the dead, to those 

Who, more than dead, live on devoid of hope ! 

'TIs that I love thee well I make complaint 

Against the evil of this time when man. 

So far advanced towards visionary goals. 

Falls back to barbarism, and excels 

The spirit of the past In war alone; 

And while the solemn light of evening broods 

O'er this fair land where Spring hath come again 

With Its rich promise, and its youthful joy, 

1 think of those young hearts now stilled, those 

boys 
With glowing faces, glossy hair, and eyes 
Undlmmed with weariness of life, for whom 
The springtime promise hath not been fulfilled; 

[151] 



THOUGHTS IN SPRING, 1916 

For no glad Summer sees their glory; Time 
Mated their Spring with Winter, and the years 
Will wax and wane, the flowers bloom and die, 
The birds will sing, depart, and the pale moon 
Keep her nocturnal watches, but for them — 
The cold and silent dead, these glories pass 
And dust becomes a little dust. 

And yet 
Fondly their memory lives within our hearts 
Ennobled, for they died and wrung from death 
Admission of their triumph; untraduced, 
Their spirits with undomitable power 
Soared to the heights whereon no mundane cause, 
Or questionable purpose, could evoke 
Thoughts of self-interest; and therein lies 
The glory and the pathos of their doom. 
Then as I mused the gathering night drew on, 
Subduing all beneath its even flood; 
Stars, and the rising moon, and the low sigh 
Of the soft-breathing earth; and then a call 
From my returning friends, on the soft wind. 
And sadly towards them, through the gloom I 
went. 



[152] 



MILLENNIUM 

LORD GOD, whose hand rules over Time, 
Whose love unshaken watches o'er 
Thy nations spread from clime to clime. 

From Arctic waste to southern shore : 
Lord God, who rulest over all, 
Hast Thou not heard Thy children call? 

We are but children In Thy sight 

Who cannot see but blindly grope 

Towards the everlasting light 

That burns beyond our earthly scope; 

Lord God, with wisdom give us grace 

To look more closely on Thy face. 

The Earth's dominion man hath had — 
Yet found In It desires that breed 

A prouder race whose hearts are sad 
With fruitless toll, Insatiate greed; 

Lord God, we weary of the years 

That render us but blood and tears. 

[153] 



MILLENNIUM 

The future that our fathers planned, 

The dreams they knew in days of old, 

Fulfilled, are ashes; heart and hand 

Faithless, have served at altars cold; 

Lord God, with wider knowledge give 

The deeper grace by which we live. 

A nobler purpose raise, O Lord, 

Within our hearts than quest of wealth, 
That we may build the realm where sword 

May never vex the peace and health 
Of those who keep the faith of old 
Nor bring Thee, Lord, a heart grown cold. 



[154] 



OTHER POEMS 



HELEN OF TROY 

LAUGHINGLY with the wind in her hair 
That brushed a gleaming breast laid bare, 
She came from the hills like the stainless snow 
Of Alpine summits which roseate grow 
In the flush of dawn; and her eyes were bright 
As the splendour of stars in a moonless night, 
Her twin feet sandalled and silver shod; 
Meet for the love of an amorous god 
She moved with the grace of a poet's line 
Winged with the lyre, the crystalline 
Air of the morn about her flowing. 
Laving the limbs superbly glowing, 
The amorous arms, and secret breast 
Lightly veiled from the lover lest 
He grow too faint with the beauty of her 
Who was white as a lily and sweet as myrrh. 

She sang like a bird in an April dawn 
When the trembling verge of light new-born 
Gleams like gold on the grey world's edge; 

[157] 



HELEN OF TROY 

And the lark, whose high-flown privilege 

Was to sentinel day from his airy tower, 

Fell silent beneath a sweeter power 

Of song that descended like manna from heaven; 

And the shepherd forgot the charge he was given, 

The fisherman left his boat on the shore, 

The trader ran from his little store 

Where swords of silver, shields of gold, 

Tyrian robes and girdles were sold; 

And a youth sprang out of the shadowed sea 

Where he bathed, his body like ivory 

White and moulded, glistening yet 

In youth's cold purity, naked and wet. 

He ran to the shore like a child entranced, 

Aureoled In the light that glanced 

On the marble form, the length of limb, 

Breadth of shoulder and grace of him 

Whom men called Paris, Priam's son. 

Whose beauty the heart of Helen won. 

And the loved of men, the world's desire, 
Spoiler of lands, and torch of fire 
Lighting the frenzied hearts of kings. 
Sang In the morn, and ran as with wings 

[158] 



HELEN OF TROY 

To him whose embrace and body chill 

Sent through her frame a breathless thrill; 

And the shepherd watched, the fisherman stood 

With passion that ran like fire in the blood, 

And the trader cried in a voice grown old — 

" What is the worth of silver and gold 

When the flesh is dry and the heart a stone? " 

Then the fisherman said — "I dwell alone 

On the homeless seas, and though nets are full 

Life without love is not beautiful." 

But the shepherd turned to them both, and said — 

" 1 am young, and my father's flocks are spread 

O'er many meadows, and all men know 

He cools his wine with Asian snow; 

Love in the city streets I bought. 

Yet the love I desire In vain Is sought." 

She lay with his head on her tremulant breast, 

Her mouth on his hair, her limbs caressed 

By the ardent youth whose beautiful face 

Lay In the soft warm resting-place; 

But her heart was troubled, her soul knew 

shame — 
" My life Is consumed by a withering flame, 

[159] 



HELEN OF TROY 

With beauty accursed of the gods — this boy 
Lures me with love, to the doom of Troy." 

While three made prayers to the adverse Fates 
She cursed the gift that desolates. 



[1 60] 



THE MOON A LOVELY MAIDEN IS 

THE moon a lovely maiden is 
Who hides from me through all the day 
Enwrapped In cloudy mysteries 
That fall away 

At sunset when she kneels to pray; 
The moon a lovely maiden Is. 

The moon has sorrowful large eyes 
And her round face Is pale with fright; 
What Is the fear from which she flies 
With face so white? 
Her absence darkens the dark night; 
The moon has sorrowful large eyes. 

A maiden who has never smiled 
The shy moon Is, most beautiful, 
Most virtuous and undefiled. 
And dutiful — 

Yet pleasanter to kiss a skull; 
A maiden who has never smiled. 

[i6i] 



THE MOON A LOVELY MAIDEN IS 

Perhaps the moon no maiden Is 
But one who goes with silent tread 
And gives a cold and solemn kiss 
To all the dead, 

And sleeps a while within each bed; 
Perhaps the moon no maiden is. 



[162] 



TO MARJORY: IN SPRINGTIME 

LITTLE winsome Marjory, 
Clasp my hand and come with me 
Where the sunshine and the flowers 
All rejoice in Sprlngtime-hours; 
Let us seek the meadow stream 
Lit with many a golden gleam, 
Where the ripples In the breeze, 
And the slender willow trees, 
Laugh and twinkle In the sun 
Like a maiden full of fun. 
Now the notched and silver palm 
Heavenward lifts Its Easter psalm, 
And along the watercourse 
Flames the yellow-blossomed gorse, 
And the grass Is soft and green 
Like a carpet for a queen — 
Little dancing Marjory, 
Clasp my hand and come with me. 

Gaily from the hawthorn bush 
Comes the twitter of the thrush, 

[163] 



TO MARJORY: IN SPRINGTIME 

Fast and faster yet he sings 

As upon the bough he swings, 

For he has so much to say 

About the nest that^s hid away 

Where you'll never find it, love ! 

Now the lark has soared above, 

Dropping from his throat the pearls 

On a string that downward whirls 

Like a thousand fairy bells 

O'er the wooded hills and dells: 

Up he soars and higher still — 

Now his topmost note is shrill — 

Ah ! he sinks — his song grows less — 

You wonder if it's dizziness? 

Little frolic Marjory, 

Shall we run to him and see? 



Radiant is the joyous sun. 
For, you see, he's just begun 
Kissing all the little girls 
On their golden tumbling curls, 
And he smiles on little boys 
When they are so full of joys. 
Oh the sun — he likes the Spring, 

[164] 



TO MARJORY: IN SPRINGTIME 

Likes It more than anything! 
Now the bee is after honey, 
Sharp as misers after money, 
And he visits all the flowers 
In the bright and sunny hours. 
All day long the lilies look 
At their faces in the brook, 
And the daisies look around 
Golden-eyed upon the ground; 
Merry, elfin Marjory, 
Clasp my hand and come with me. 



All the scented hedgerows gay 
Deck themselves in bridal may, 
A^nd the roses are in bud. 
Each a tiny drop of blood; 
And a thousand fledgling-throats 
Try to learn their woodland notes. 
For how strange would seem the Spring 
If no birds had learned to sing! 
Let us go and in the grass 
Lie and watch the clouds that pass. 
Fairy ships all sailing through 
Strange and boundless seas of blue. 

[165] 



TO MARJORY: IN SPRINGTIME 

Let us go, It is such fun 

Idly dreaming In the sun I 

Laughing little Marjory, 

Will you, will you come with me ? 



[i66] 



THE YOUTH OF BEAUTY 

A YOUTH came down to the City, from over 
the Hills of Sleep, 
He came like the star of morning that fronts the 

waking deep : 
His cheeks were mantled with roses, his brow like 

ivory gleamed, 
And his eyes were dark and lustrous, the eyes of 
one who dreamed. 

He came to the gate of the City, and went thro' 
the streets of men. 

Singing the Song of Beauty they never will hear 
again : 

He moved in the crowded market where mer- 
chants sought for gold, 

Where Love was purchased with riches, and Hon- 
our itself was sold. 

Oh strange was the song of his singing, with pas- 
sion the strains o'erflowed 

[167] 



THE YOUTH OF BEAUTY 

Till his face was lit with glory, and his eyes were 

fires that glowed; 
The merchants, forgetting their bargains, went up 

to the place where he sang, 
And women, with children, came running at sound 

of the notes that rang 

Like the full, fierce torrents of Springtide, filled 
with a mountain tone, 

Eager for sunlit meadows after the cold, high 
zone, 

Now like the blended music of myriad, birdlike 
notes 

Flooding the stream-girt valleys, from out a thou- 
sand throats. 

Dreamily, dreamily, sweetly, now high, now low, 

now soft. 
The radiant youth was singing, and as he passed 

they oft 
Turned to the ground their faces, for in their eyes 

the tears 
Gathered and glistened, and falling, broke thro' 

the seal of years. 

[i68] 



THE YOUTH OF BEAUTY 

The merchant heard in the singing the voice that 

was his when, a boy, 
He stood by the knees of his mother in the far-off 

days of joy:- 
The children listened with wonder — a strange, 

sweet story this. 
Filled with a sorrowful yearning; whence came 

this Youth whose bliss 

Had stopped the hum of the market, had voiced 

the grief of years. 
And made them think of something — sad to the 

point of tears? — 
For a maiden ceased from kissing the lips of the 

youth she loved, 
And the children's eyes grew rounder, and never 

a listener moved. 

" Come with me out to the sunshine, follow me 

where I lead, 
And leave behind in silence the woeful weight of 

greed; 
Men of the City, your labour is useless for ye 

shall go, 
Borne out on the breath of Winter, nor reap the 
things ye sow. 

[169] 



THE YOUTH OF BEAUTY 

" Others shall follow after and reap your gift of 

tears 
With moans and heavy sorrow, bearing the weight 

of years: 
Come ! for the things immortal are the things ye 

need not seek — 
The dreams endure for ever, the facts of men are 

weak! 

" Who shall destroy the sunset, and who shall 

silence the lark? 
O ye who toil for sorrow, O ye who work in the 

dark, 
Scatter the gold of your minting and gather the 

gold of the sky, 
For the things unmade of men are the things men 

cannot buy! " 

He sang, but some were scornful, the merchant 

turned away — 
A sunset was a sunset, a thing of everyday, 
For dreams he had no leisure, and they had little 

to give, 
For he must toil for a living — though he never 

had time to live. 

[170] 



THE YOUTH OF BEAUTY 

The maiden turned to her lover who drank the 

magic song, 
She raised her lips to kiss him, and proved that 

love was strong 
To shatter the thought of the morrow with bliss 

of the present hour; 
And they left the dreamer singing and sought a 

sheltered bower. 

The mother called to her children; who knew what 

evil spell 
This song of peace and beauty placed on their 

ears? — ah, well — 
The beauty that never sickens, the rapture that 

never dies 
Is less than the lips of children with laughter and 

piteous sighs. 

" Come with me over the mountains " — he sang 
to the dwindling throng — 

" For men are sad with toiling, and many are worn 
with wrong; 

I go in quest of Beauty, in search of things that are 

One with the noonday silence, one with the even- 
ing star. 

[171] 



THE YOUTH OF BEAUTY 

" Follow me over the valley, there's death in the 

city-gloom, 
Your backs are bowed with labour, your brows are 

writ with doom, 
Oh there is Death in your laughter, and Sorrow 

within your eyes ; 
Come where the light shall fail not, and silence 

makes ye wise ! " 

The youth went on thro' the City and down the 

echoing street. 
His brow bedecked with roses, and sandal-shod 

his feet; 
The maidens gazing after beheld his radiant face 
Intense with the passion of Beauty, and lit with 

holy grace. 

On thro' the gate of the City, he went towards the 

height 
That gathered about its summit the battlements of 

night : 
His song passed into the silence from whence it 

came to men — 
The passionate Song of Beauty they never will 

hear again. 

[172] 



THE YOUTH OF BEAUTY 

The gold of the earth they garner, the woes of toll 

are theirs, 
Famine, Oppression and Sorrow come with the 

wearying years, 
Dreams they are fain to purchase, for dreams and 

rest they weep — 
But the Youth of Beauty returns not from over 

the Hills of Sleep. 



[173] 



A DEAD POET 

(James Elroy Flecker) 

TT TEAVE for his brow the laurel wreath, he 

For ever dumb, the lips that sang so well 
Are locked in silence 'neath the alien skies, 
And all the tales are told that he shall tell. 

Ah, mourn a little, for his life was sweet. 
And silence is too solemn after song, 
He has gone hence ere men had time to greet 
One who but seldom sang nor tarried long. 

So sweet and light his singing, scarcely heard, 
Only the silence touched our ears with sense 
Of something void, as when a fluting bird 
No more breaks on the valley's somnolence. 

He has gone hence, — ah, whither ! who shall say? 
Perchance he treads the trackless paths of Night, 
Long wearied in the Caravan of Day, 
Perchance he seeks the Gardens of Delight, 

[174] 



A DEAD POET 

And thro' dim-shaded valleys journeys on, 
A moon-led pilgrim seeking for the Thing 
Which dreamers spake of in the days long gone, 
And poets sang of in a Grecian Spring. 

It may be he has found those mounts of snow 
All flushed with rose, those glades of endless sleep, 
And knows the truths which many sought to 

know, 
And wonders now why men grow sick and weep. 

Why some are sad, as he was sad In days 
When Beauty was too beautiful and frail. 
When a dear voice was sweet beyond all praise, 
Rising at night-time from a starlit vale. 

O nevermore for him the sunset fades. 
Nor ocean lifts her waters to the moon, 
No more his feet shall wander in the glades. 
His soul with mystic rapture deep aswoon; 

For him no caravans with sound of bells 

Move from the Syrian cities shadow-dim. 

Nor long-lashed maidens dream by palm-girt 

wells. 
Their phantom-world Is all unknown to him. 

[175] 



A DEAD POET 

He holds a wider converse with the stars, 
And roams unfettered through the jewelled night, 
His song flows in the wind 'mid nenuphars 
Swaying and rustling in the dawning light. 

Weave for his brow the laurel, for his name 
What brighter memory than those sweet songs 
Sung In a too-brief life that knew not fame. 
Yet gave this wealth which now to Time belongs ! 



[176] 



ON VIVISECTION 

GOD, the great artist, skilled in fashioning, 
Made Earth, then furnished it with every- 
thing 
Of wordless beauty, flowers, and birds that sing, 
Bees, butterflies and dogs, and things that ran, 
And lastly, to crown all, created man. 
Then cried — "There is no other God who can 
Out-dream the beauty of my lordly plan! " 

Then God grew wearied with the things He saw 
And shattered, with a mood, the perfect law. 
Fashioned the tearing fang, the bloody claw. 
The leprous things that leap and crawl and twist, 
And thought — " I am supreme in this, I wist, 
No pang Is undevised, no horror missed." 
But man brought forth the VIvisectionlst. 



[177] 



ABSENCE 

(To W. K.) 

THE heart, more faithful than the brain, 
In dear remembrance keeps the hours 
And minutes — each a golden grain 
We scattered, as the countless flowers 

Fall to the scythe that ruthless ends 

The glory of the hidden seed: 

So Time the Reaper o'er us bends 

And reaps our moments, while hearts bleed. 

We knew this end, we smiled, and thought — 
" The day Is far, no vain regret 
Shall come between us now " — we sought 
To use the moments well, and yet 

This hour now comes when I depart 
And from the eyes and voice I knew 
Find shelter for my lonely heart 
Wherein, afar, to think of you. 

[178] 



ABSENCE 

O friend, If somehow, on the wind 
Your voice came to me, and I turned 
To see your face, and found the kind 
Calm light of eyes for which I yearned, 

Then would this pleasure In my lot 
Seem wholly good, and Time's decree 
Less harsh — like dreams that I forgot 
With morning light these days would be; 

For here a thousand sounds and sights 
Bring joy In wonder of new days, 
A treasury of strange delights 
Surrounds me In these brighter ways 

Until the pain of troubled years 
Falls from me like a pall of woe. 
And as the moon Its aura wears. 
So now old sorrows round me flow 

Taking a beauty from the light 
Of this new rising Into realms 
Above those regions of the night 
Where doubt the strongest overwhelms. 

[179] 



ABSENCE 

Here, where the city by the sea 
Holds converse with the refluent tide, 
Come Noon and Night with majesty 
To robe her like an orient bride. 

The sunsets blaze beyond the towers. 
As windows down a fane of prayer. 
And ceaseless through the changing hours 
Ships of all nations, seeking her, 

Pour in her lap the spoils they bring 
From lands of palm and burning noon; 
They come in sunrise glimmering, 
Or wraith-like sail beneath the moon. 

With darkness, on the city^s crest 
The lights blaze like a diadem, 
And there upon her heaving breast 
Flashes and glides each lustrous gem. 

Diamond and ruby, amethyst — 
The jewelled river, trembling, lies 
Rippled with light. In moonlight kissed; 
While ferry-boats, like dragon flies, 

[i8o] 



ABSENCE 

Hover from shore to distant shore 
That, seaward, stretch into the night 
Where the onrushing waters roar 
Towards the long, linked chains of light 

Mirrored in the lagoons that wait 
Tidal re-union with the sea 
When the lone sands. Immaculate, 
Re-conquered, set their currents free. 

And oft the siren's wall Is heard 
Borne inland like the cry of pain 
Of a lost soul, to darkness lured. 
That has no hope of light again. 

The sound of wind and moving seas. 
The unknown, silent ships that pass, 
Symbols are these of mysteries 
Discerned but dimly in the glass 

That mirrors life behind our sight, 
Contracting to the eyes' domain 
The reaches of a vaster night. 
Unmeasured worlds that still remain. 

[i8i] 



ABSENCE 

O friend, there Is a time when speech 
Is frozen with the breath of awe, 
When all the little truths we preach 
Seem fragments of a vaster law, 

And In these days of lengthened view 
How I have longed that you were here, 
To walk with me, debate, construe, 
And differ — as in days that were. 

Liverpool, 1916. 



[182] 



THE COURTESAN 

GRUEL and fair and mutable as love, 
Wide waters rise and call along their shores 
To dreamers with the sunset In their eyes 
Which ever seek the land beyond, the star 
With light serene above the farthest wave; 
And yet, O sea, so old and still so young. 
Whose bosom rises with eternal breath. 
Whose breasts shall wither not with age, nor lose 
Their savour to the lips of men, thou art 
A snare for the uneasy hearts that seek 
A wilderness, trackless and wonderful. 

And If such wonders lie upon thy breast, 

If thy cold mouth entices, and ensnares 

With bloodless kisses, and thy rapture holds 

The fealty of men from age to age. 

What purpose hath thy gift, for whom the wealth 

And splendour hoarded from the light of day 

In rayless caverns where green waters flow 

And pass with noiseless motion? Are there eyes 

[183] 



THE COURTESAN 

Thy witchery hath not charmed, or alien lips 
That have not made surrender on thine own, 
Or limbs that have not pressed thy sinuous 

grace — 
A proud and noble lover who has laughed 
With kingly scorn upon a courtesan? 
For one day. It would seem, thou wilt disrobe, 
Put off the shimmering mantle that enfolds 
Thy cold, translucent body, and reveal 
Thy fortune and thy splendour till the eyes 
Of that proud lover will disdain no more 
The heiress of the world's great treasury; 
And locked in his embrace In peace at last 
Thou wilt not moan upon the shore, nor sob 
In the night wind, nor murmur In the sun 
But sleep forever in an ageless peace. 



[184] 



BALLAD OF ADMIRAL BLAKE 

(For Joseph Conrad) 

WHEN Admiral Blake sailed out to sea 
His ships of the line were five, 
And his flag was waving high and free 
As he ploughed the crested main: 
The cannon roared, the war-drums rolled, 
For Devon lads were strong and bold. 
And it was good to be alive, 
Oh very good to be alive 
And singe the beard of Spain! 

The bosun's pipe called loud and clear. 

The sails were bellying out. 
And the Admiral sniffed the morning air 

As they sailed on the starboard tack; 
The headland faded dim and grey 
In the mist of morn as they sailed away. 

But they heard the distant shout, 
The landsmen's farewell shout. 
And a cheer went ringing back. 

[185] 



BALLAD OF ADMIRAL BLAKE 

Three days and nights they took the breeze 

Till the land was out of sight; 
Like birds of prey they roamed the seas 

But the Spaniards all were shy, 
Till the fifth day came, and with morning rose 
Sixteen ships on the weather-bows — 

" Spaniards? shall we fly or fight? 
Spaniards? then we'll have to fight! " 
And the Devon lads cried ** Ay I " 

They drew In line till the Spaniards loomed, 

Towering sail on sail. 
Cried Admiral Blake — " Those ships are 
doomed. 
So clear the deck for the fray! 
Sixteen to five ! — 'tis a hot day's work, 
But I've not a lad that'll want to shirk, 
So give 'em a cheery hall! " 
They gave 'em a cheery hall 
And the cannon roared away. 

From morn to noon and noon to night 

They hammered the Spaniards' sides, 

But the pompous galleons took to flight 
As darkness fell on them all; 
[i86] 



BALLAD OF ADMIRAL BLAKE 

" We'll follow them home," cried Admiral Blake, 
" And send them a shot when it's time to wake ! 

They're very useful guides, 

Oh, very useful guides, 
And where they roost — we'll call ! " 

When daylight glimmered they saw the prey, 

Fear gave them speed enough, 
Flying for home that loomed up grey. 

" We'll follow on — keep in close. 
That's their port; more sail on the mast! 
We've tracked the foe to his lair at last! 

We'll tweak the Spaniards' nose. 
We'll pull the Spaniards' nose 
And by God! we'll give it snuff! " 

All through the morn they followed straight, 

The Spaniards laughed to see 
The simple English swallow the bait 

And follow them into port; 
For in Santa Cruz the cannon lay 
To left and right of the harbour bay — 

Oh the Spaniards laughed in glee. 
While the Admiral cried in glee — 
" Such a fight we have never yet fought! " 

[187] 



BALLAD OF ADMIRAL BLAKE 

Five small ships and a thousand men, 

A hundred cannon or so, 
Oh many would never see home again 

But never a man knew fear ! 
And the cliffs loomed up to left and right 
And they ran right into the heart of the fight, 
And hailed the waiting foe, 
The crafty, waiting foe. 
With a rousing Devon cheer I 

Then fire belched from the hills around. 

The galleons ringed them in, 
But Admiral Blake ran two aground 
And felled the mast of the third; 
Two more drew in and the cannon roared; 
*' Run her down, and get aboard! " 

The Admiral cried above the din. 
They heard his voice above the din 
And they took him at his word ! 

All through the noon in the battle smoke 
They waged a desperate fight. 

Above and around the thunder broke. 
Ship after ship withdrew; 

For some were maimed and some were afire, 

[188] 



BALLAD OF ADMIRAL BLAKE 

And the rest had lost their keen desire, 

And they fought each other in fright, 
Destroyed each other in fright, 
And the fear and panic grew! 

And the British ship like a wolf at bay 

Snarled at the frightened foe; 
Ten treasure ships at the bottom lay. 

Two of the rest were burnt; 
Then Admiral Blake sailed out to sea 
Battered and shattered, victorious, free! 
For the Spaniards let them go, 
They had to let them go ! 
For their lesson had been well learnt! 

Admiral Blake sailed over the foam 

Wearied and wounded sore, 
'' Speed for England and get me home — 

Home to my native ground! " 
And Plymouth watched for him; long the crowd 
Cheered when the ship lay off like a cloud, 
And the Admiral heard the roar. 
Smiled as he heard the roar, 
Then died as he reached the Sound. 

[189] 



THE GREAT SHIPS 

(For John Masefield) 

I WONDER if the great ships 
Are coming o'er the bar 
With the West Wind In their rigging, 
From unseen lands afar, 
And if they slowly sail on 
The rayless waters flowing 
By the gates of a city I love well, 
And where I would be going. 

For I am as the great ships 

And on the tide of life 

Go forth to unknown places 

And ne'er find rest but strife, 

And In a human ocean 

'Mid Isles of brick and stone. 

Past ports and lands I know not, 

I sail through seas unknown. 

I wonder If the great ships 
Are crowding Into port, 
[190] 



THE GREAT SHIPS 

With mournful sirens wailing 
As though from sea they brought 
The terror of their conflict 
Which holds them as they creep 
From highways of the ocean 
And wonders of the deep. 

For I am as the great ships, 

And sailing in a sea 

Where chartless souls are moving 

On human tides — to me 

Comes thought of lands of twilight 

And ports of rest where lie 

The weary ships unchartered, 

Beneath an evening sky. 

I wonder If the great ships 
Creep up at break of dawn, 
The seagulls round their rigging. 
Grey-winged, with cries forlorn; 
Those ships and birds sail ever 
Through dreams of mine that are 
Of lone sands In the twilight 
And the sunset o'er the bar. 

London, May, 191 7. 

[191] 



THE HOUSE ON A HILL 

A LITTLE house on a windy hill 
And, beyond, a starry sky. 
Sleeping fields in the moonlight chill 
And the keen wind raging high; 
But secure, within, a home of peace 
Warm and locked from the night, 
Music and generous talk and ease 
In the soft, dim candle-light. 

Fleeting hours not touched with fame, 
Nor the splendour of dreams come true, 
And yet how a little joy will shame 
The triumphs the world can view! 
Without, the wind rose high and shrill, 
Within, secure, and warm. 
In a little heaven high on a hill 
What cared we for the storm? 

For a golden voice with the 'cello rose, 
Two hands touched ivory keys, 

[192] 



THE HOUSE ON A HILL 

And our hearts were lulled to soft repose 

With love-lorn melodies; 

And the lonely wind like a spirit went 

Walling along the night, 

Heard In the pause when the music, spent, 

Died In a faint delight. 

Ah! the laurels of years and the triumphs of 

years 
Shall fade, but the little things 
Will all come back with a grace of tears 
On soft, Inaudible wings. 
And the wind shall wail o'er a phantom hill. 
The music come to an end. 
And one will mourn the voice grown still, 
The eyes of a vanished friend. 



[193] 



A 



THE VALLEY 

ROAD winds through the valley in a land 
I know afar, 

And the hills rise up before It, robed In purple 
haze, 

It is a road through twilight that seeks the even- 
ing star, 

A road that I would journey as in remembered 
days. 

The hills shut out the sunset, and golden are their 

brows. 
And It Is warm In the valley that slumbers at their 

feet, 
When through the misty meadows they drive the 

lowing cows. 
And the voices of the daytime die down the empty 

street. 

The silence, like a curtain, falls on the sleeping 
hills, 

[194] 



THE VALLEY 

Only the owl is wakeful, and the wind that wan- 
ders on; 

And I can feel the silence, and my heart in exile 
fills 

With yearning for the homeland, the days for 
ever gone. 

A road winds through the valley, it shines beneath 

the moon, 
The hills rise black before it, the stars are bright 

above ; 
Oh, I would die tomorrow to gain my heart's one 

boon — 
This night to see in moonlight the valley that I 

love! 



[195] 



EXILE 

(For Philip Gibbs) 

LONG days, long days that never seem to end, 
Why do you tarry so, Is not my heart 
Beating against the bars that will not bend 
And let me fly to those dear friends afar? 
For here the days grow changeless, and apart 
From those I love, for whom my voice grows 

kind, 
I walk in solitude grown eloquent. 

There is a grove where every kindly star 

Glows bright when shadows lengthen, and the 

days 
Go westward, and the woodland pathways wind 
To little dells that surely know my face. 
For I was young with them and knew their joys. 
How Spring dwelt in them, flushed with loveliness. 
Till winter followed, and their beauty went. 
Oh, are you lovely still for other boys 
And do they dream as I did long ago, 

[196] 



EXILE 

And strip and let the water's soft caress 
Fall on their bodies, white and all agleam, 
Then He upon the grass and dream and dream 
The mighty things which only youth can know? 

Here by the seashore breaks the cruel sea 
Loud In the midnight baring its white lip, 
Here, while the darkness broods and covers me, 
I am grown wise with that fine scholarship 
Which absence fosters and the heart makes dear. 
What lies beyond the darkness, on the face 
Of those black waters restless 'neath the moon — 
A wondrous daybreak, white and fresh and clear? 
Is darkness always lost in light somewhere. 
And Sorrow made to flee the morning's grace? 
O Dawn, I cry to thee " Come soon — come 
soon! " 

There is a day that comes however long 
The darkness broods upon the calling soul. 
Which I shall know, and down familiar ways 
Run laughing where a thousand whispers throng 
And things are glad once more to see my face. 
Oh, I will run from darkness, fill the whole 
Glad morning with a noise of wildest laughter 

[197] 



EXILE 

And clasp familiar hands In many a place 

I never ceased to love, and look In eyes 

That are not strange or cold; and there shall be 

Great music at the heart of things, and after 

Shall follow silence, cherished by the wise; 

For I shall sit and call each memory 

To show Its faithfulness, and dream again 

How I went forth from home and cherished 

friends 
To learn In solitude and distant pain 
How happy is the day when exile ends ! 



[198] 




HABBERLEY VALLEY REVISITED 

|0WN to Habberley Valley I went at break 
of day, 
The glory of the morning sun lit up the golden 

way, 
And all the hills and valleys, the paths and hidden 

dells 
Called with myriad voices, entranced with myriad 
spells. 

Ah, verdant valley dreaming in the light of this 

old sun, 
How many days have fled away, how much is left 

undone 
Since last I walked your mossy ways, and lay 

among the heather 
When Love and Youth together dreamed in 

Summer's royal weather. 

Something of the old rapture for evermore has 
fled, 

[199] 



HABBERLEY VALLEY REVISITED 

Some of the dreams have vanished, some of the 
hopes are dead, 

And the heart has lost a little of the simple joy of 
life. 

With the dearest visions shattered in the ever- 
lasting strife. 

Days of old 

Like the gold 
Bright at morn on a mountain rim. 
Now on the peak of a glaring noon 
How I long for your valleys dim! 
Shadows of Love and Youth and Laughter 
Flee in the noon that follows after! 

Down to Habberley Valley I took the winding 

way 
Where the pine trees rustle softly and the silver 

birches sway, 
And as I trod the purple paths a thousand 

thoughts upstarted 
Tinged with regret for ancient days when life was 

single-hearted. 

[200] 



HABBERLEY VALLEY REVISITED 

Ah still the voices called me and the woodland 

echoes rang, 
From every wrinkled trunk and bole the elfin 

voices sprang, 
*' Oh thou hast been unfaithful — thou art come 

to us again. 
Let Mother Earth absolve thee with her tears of 

silver rain ! 

" Here In the happy valley, morning, noon and 

night 
The silence of the woodland shall bring thy soul 

delight. 
The dawn shall break In beauty where the hills In 

splendour He, 
Oh come again, oh come again to the joys that 

never die ! " 

Days of old 

Like the gold 
Bright at morn on a mountain rim, 
Now in the weariness of day 
How I long for your valleys dim! 
Shadows of Youth and Love and Laughter 
Flee in the noon that follows after! 
[201] 



HABBERLEY VALLEY REVISITED 

Down to Habberley Valley, as though a ghostly 
hand 

Had led me back across the years into the shadow- 
land, 

I trod In waking wonder, and my joy returned 
anew, 

For the heart was hushed with silence, and the 
sweetness thrilled me through ! 

*' Oh come again to me and lay thy heart upon my 

breast, 
I am the great Earth-Mother, in my bosom there 

is rest 
For the weariest of mortals, when the world hath 

left thee broken 
I shall fold thee in my silence, in the calm of Love 

unspoken ! 

In the silver of the dawn and in the gold when 

twilight's falling, 
In the hush of adoration there's a voice that's 

calling, calling — 
And a whisper seems to blow across the valley, 

and the sound 
As of fairies dancing lightly sweeps along the 

dewey ground." 

[202] 



HABBERLEY VALLEY REVISITED 

Days of old 

Like the gold 
Bright at morn on a mountain rim, 
Now the ancient joy returns 
As I tread in the valleys dim; 
Shadows of Youth and Love and Laughter 
Beckon me and I follow after! 

Down to Habberley Valley I went at break of 

day 
And wandered where the gorse In flame lights up 

a golden way, 
And where the stately pine trees shed their 

needles, sweet and brown. 
Laved In the lustral light of dawn In peace I laid 

me down. 

The branches waved above me, and the wind ran 
through the grass, 

I heard strange voices In the wood, steps that did 
come and pass — 

And the glad sun kissed my body, and warmly 
smiled on me — 

While heaven glowed In splendour — blue to In- 
finity ! 

[203] 



HABBERLEY VALLEY REVISITED 

Oh here was rest and silence after the arid ways 
That through the wide world's wilderness lead on 

for endless days; 
Splendour of sun and silence, beauty of valley and 

glade, 
Here peace stole In upon me beneath the pine 

trees' shade. 

Days of old 

Like the gold 
Bright at morn on a mountain rim, 
Once again my heart is young 
As I dwell in the valleys dim; 
What if Youth flies — Love and Laughter 
These remain and follow after! 



[204] 



A GARDEN AT RYDAL 

NOW wanes the splendour of the mountain 
rim, 
The purple shadows in the hilly fold 
Darken, and every lustrous peak grows dim, 
The mists creep in the valley, white and cold. 
The birds have chanted their last requiem 
And westward all the hills are dark and bold. 

Here in the garden not a leaf is stirred, 

The happy laughter of the sunny moon 

Is stilled, the busy noise of bee and bird 

Comes not again, but Night brings her soft 

boon — 
For louder through the quiet now is heard 
The streamlet silvered with the rising moon, 

And like old thoughts of noonday happiness 
The perfume of the roses floods the air. 
And the night breezes with a light caress 
Fall on my brow and wander through my hair; 
Silence and Night, these influences bless 
Our souls with rapt communion deep and rare. 

[205] 



A GARDEN AT RYDAL 

Here In this garden dwell abiding things, 
The everlasting beauty of the earth, 
The lyric rapture of the bird that sings. 
The magic of the dawn, the simple mirth 
Of little insect lives, the peace that clings 
To solitude, the wealth of common worth; 

Abiding things that seem to mock at Fame, 
That vanity which we too oft adore, 
Forgetting how true greatness of a name 
Lies in Its worth to those, however poor, 
Who tread the silent way, untouched with blame. 
Serving great ends, illustriously obscure. 

Now in the silence comes a space for thought, 
A time to think, a quiet for the mind 
To brood in, and great Influences wrought 
From the enduring moods of Nature find 
Their healing mission in the mind that fought 
For a dim end, despairingly and blind. 

But here the fever of our life Is cooled, 
Passionless as the starlit night that fills 
The sleeping valley, all my thoughts are schooled 

[206] 



A GARDEN AT RYDAL 

To a great calmness by the sleeping hills; 

Now Is my life my own, nor overruled 

By wild unrest that breeds a thousand Ills; 

For silence Is the wise man's true domain, 
And Nature the great book whose wisdom leads 
Through tranquil days wherein choice spirits gain 
The wealth of true content, and whoso reads 
The language spoken by the wind and rain 
Knows the one Truth behind the many creeds. 

What profit to the soul If we with dreams 
Would shape the world more to our heart's de- 
sire. 
And following the transitory gleams 
Lose native wealth and fall, in quest of higher? 
Here in this garden 'mid the hill and streams 
Silence has truths none other can Inspire. 

The bright star burning on the mountain crest 
Seen In Its steady splendour through the vale 
Has no diviner purpose than the quest 
Burning within my heart, and if I fail 
Then better will arise until the best 
Comes In that Dawn when all our stars grow pale. 

[207] 



A GARDEN AT RYDAL 

The quest! — the consummation every one 
Seeks for the dream he dreams, grows surer here, 
For ardent spirits wearied with the sun 
Grow tranquil In this peace that everywhere 
Falls with the eventide; what we have done, 
Or what remains, loses Its weight of care. 

The great hills sleeping In the lunar light, 
The dark sky mirrored in the mere, the call 
From the lone owl that fills the solemn night, 
The cricket in the meadow, and the tall 
Trees In the valley, stir with sound and sight 
A newer sense that wakes amid them all, 

That wakes, until the silence as with wings 
Lifts me above the valley, and I know 
A purpose vast with promise, love that sings 
Under life's current, mighty thoughts that flow 
Familiar as remembered music — things 
That find their birth in silence, come and go. 



[208] 



A BOY'S LAUGHTER 

PROSTRATE before the Sun's high, flaming 
throne 
The Earth lay molten In a thousand hues 
That, like a rainbow's arch, diffuse 
Their lights of myriad tone 
Over a quivering zone 
Fearfully reaching towards the setting Sun. 

High o'er the woodland, far beyond the hill. 
Lost In the purpled haze 
Mantling the sun-flushed ways, 
The cerulean wind-swept sky 
Scattered her rosy flocks, and triumphing 
Flung far their bannered beauty to the East 
Where lo ! the rising Moon, so wan and chill, 

Ghostly and frail as one about to die. 
Wrapped round with mists of the dissolving 
earth, 
Rode on the flood of Night, 
Enrobed In lunar light, 
Ere died the glories of the sun-god's feast 

[209] 



A BOY'S LAUGHTER 

Or stilled to silence was his flaming mirth, 
For he had died as daily he must die — 
Gloriously, on his blood-encrimsoned bed. 
Where he, soul-centred, smileth on their play. 
And smiling, giveth Day. 



Far on the westering course the pilgrim Sun 
Journeyed along the flame-fed track of light. 
Leaving to Earth the last bequest of Night: 
And from a mist-wreathed .blackthorn bush that 
shed 
Its sere, sad topmost leaf, the last lone one, 
A blackbird, yellow-billed. 
With husky voice outcalled, 
And all the silence filled. 
Then ceased and shivered, at the sound ap- 
palled. 
But in the leafless garden where the rose 
Once reared her vaunted beauty to the 

noon. 
Holding within her fragrant folds the 

tears 
Shed through the silent watches of the 
Moon 

[210] 



A BOY'S LAUGHTER 

By one, who, dreamlike, walked In Love's 
dire throes 
And passion-fretted fears, 

(Loosing her tresses In the scented 
wind. 
Mourning that hearts grow cold, and Love grows 
blind) 
Now, in the garden where the rose's 

bloom 
Lay In a wintry tomb. 
Where no voice mourned the love for ever lost, 
Sharing the rose's doom, — 



A limpid voice its lucid notes uptossed. 
Winsome and tremulous as a fairy thought 

Builded on naught: 
With music free, unthinking and unsought, 
Upwelling from the fountain of the soul — 
A boy's light laugh 
Came bright as bubbled, mirth-provoking wine 
That gods divine 
Upon Olympus quaff; 
But unto me, the voice of that glad boy 
Brought echoing pain beneath the sound of joy, 

[211] 



A BOY'S LAUGHTER 

For I, alas, a singer, see the whole, 
The end that makes a shadow of all mirth 

Upon this changeful earth. 
And I had wished to keep that merry voice 

Wherein my thoughts rejoice. 
But Life, alas, moves onwards with the Sun, 
And day is never done 
Until the creeping night 
Gathers the quivering limbs unto her breast, 
And stills the heart to rest 
With soothing sleep. 

O happy voice of Youth, ring out ! for now 
The springflood surges thro' the singing frame, 
And for the undimmed sight 
The virgin Earth hath donned her bridal gown, 
Flower-flecked in green and brown; 
And thou mayst kiss her brow 
With boyish adoration chaste and deep, 
Calling her many a name 
Sweet as her flower-strewn breast 
That to her wearied children giveth eternal 
rest. 
Dream not of future years 
[212] 



A BOY'S LAUGHTER 

For they are filled with tears, 
But take the present good; 
The passionless love, the endless dream, the flow- 
ers of purity 
Now In the garden of thy heart upspring. 
Unheeding dim far-off Futurity 
Whose wintry flood 
Bears down 'twixt cheerless shores where no birds 
sing, 
Youth's blossoms, withering. 

Within the garden, though the Winter drear 
Has placed Its palsied touch upon each leaf, 
There is no fear, 
There is no grief 
While music such as thine 
Startles the blackbird on the barren bough: 
Oh Summer is not dead for evermore, 
Though sounds no music in the frosty air. 
As oft of yore, 
When softest flutlngs to the Moon did vow 
A heart's unchanging love for one so fair: 
Oh list! the lucid laughter rings again 
And from the bird all pain 
Of wintry desolation fades away — 

[213] 



A BOY'S LAUGHTER 

Surely a Springtime madrigal he heard, 
Those were the flutes of Spring! 
Echoing! Echoing! 
Whereat the bird 
Breaks through the silence of his own dismay, 
And in the barren garden once more sings. 

O Joy, whose magic wings 
Soar up in music unto Hope and Love, 

Within this boy's heart move 
That he with tremulant music of his voice 
May call this saddened garden to rejoice, 

Teaching the sorrowing bird forgotten song. 
For while this swift, spontaneous laughter runs 
Like magic fire along our wintry veins 
The sorrowful heart grows youthful, glad and 
strong. 
And all the wearying weight of life sustains ! 

O Desolation, powerless to break 
The music of young life, 
Thou spirit of Destruction, shall we mourn 
While such light joy finds utterance, and is borne 

Across the flowerless garden? Nay! I take 

[214] 



A BOY'S LAUGHTER 

This music of a boyish heart of mine, 
And through the echoing chambers of my soul 
Its harmony divine 
Memorably shall roll: 
And If the burden of dead beauty weighs 
Too heavily upon me In the days 

When Summer's glory threatens to depart, 
Then shall a boy's light laughter from a day 
Long passed away, 
Come back and whisper softly unto me; 
Then I shall hear, and I shall understand, 
Loving the garden's grief, as loves the land 
The midnight moaning of the Moon-drawn sea. 



[215] 



TO PETER 

PETER, when I hear you sing 
And your merry laughter ring 
Then I know to be alive 
Is very good when you are five. 
If you had the power to give 
Something of that life you live — 
Oh, so distant, now, from me — 
I might laugh with you and be 
Happy as the day is long, 
Sing, like you, a merry song. 

Peter, when I hear you speak 
To your father, all I seek. 
Like a bubble blown from soap, 
Bursts and leaves me little hope, 
For to him the words you say 
Mean so much, and I, one day 
Long ago, talked so to one 
Who would now scarce know his son; 
Yet perhaps some words I said 

[216] 



TO PETER 

Are remembered by the dead. 
Would go too — he could not find 
Another boy of just your kind; 
And remember, Peter, you 
Would ne'er find such a father, too ! 



[217] 



TO RICHARD Le GALLIENNE 

(Inscription on a Book of Verse) 

AS a page unto his knight 
Sings to give his lord delight 
'Tis so I bring these songs to you, 
Fain to fall beneath your sight 

E'en though they tell of nothing new; 



For, a poet, you will know. 
Rarest roses often grow 

Upon the tree mature with years, 
And the sweetest songs that flow 

Are those that tell of ancient tears. 



Beauty Is the smile of Truth : 

You have plucked the rose of Youth, 

Have strewn its petals one by one, 
You have laughed and loved with ruth — 

Yet beauty lives though youth is done; 

[218] 



TO RICHARD Le GALLIENNE 

And from the Immortal tree 
Of Beauty that eternally 

Strews flowers In the path of Time, 
I have plucked — O take from me, 

Love's laureate — this rose of rhyme. 



[219] 



TO A CLIMBER 

HAVE you a doubt? — then settle it, and 
say — 
" I have resolved henceforward from today — " 
Have you a fear? — crush it, or it will rise, 
Face the whole world with courage in your eyes. 
No man can win whose heart invites defeat. 
Govern yourself — the whole world at your feet 
Lies, quick to serve the man who knows his mind; 
But in your strength be not too strong or blind 
To the sure Fate that watches o'er the weak. 
Fear not the voice of many — ever seek 
Reason in calmness, for the greatest fall 
Listening to counsel that was urged too well; 
Keep to your word, and honour Friendship's 

claim — 
There is no ruin like an inward shame. 
Know in the hour that you decide to fight 
There is no ally half so strong as Right, 
And be not weak to battle with the strong 
If, in your heart, you know their cause is wrong. 

[220] 



TO A CLIMBER 

Honour your foe, and never learn to hate 
Lest come a time that you will perpetrate 
Acts that portray the fury of the fool. 
Fear not to forgive; love, and be not too cool, 
For only little minds have little passions; 
Scorn not the failure — knowing how Life fash- 
Ions 
Strength out of weakness which has found Its end. 
Live In the sun, laugh like a boy, and spend 
Yourself for others — selfishness Is crime 
Against the law of life and Love sublime, 
And lastly. In success be not too proud — 
For all your glory ends but In a shroud. 



[221] 



TO NOBLE WOMEN 

DEi\R women, sweet and noble-hearted 
Spirits sojourning on earth, 
Where love and grief are never parted. 
What bright influence gives you birth? 

In that heaven made of dreams 
Which the heart of man desires 
Were you born of rainbow gleams 
That God's smile on tears inspires? 

For you span the darkest sorrow. 
Build your nature from the storm 
With the sunshine that you borrow, 
Moulded to prophetic form. 

Dear noble women whose compassion 

Makes us children at your knees, 

Is it from our griefs you fashion 

Your bright faith which brings such ease? 

[222] 



TO A YOUNG POET 

Who Deplored the Passing of Youth 

YOU sighed and looked Into the glass, 
And seemg yourself — " I soon will pass 
With all my petty triumphs " — you said — 
" I shall grow old, fall sick, be dead." 
And then you sighed again, and I, 
Laughing unkindly, made reply — 
" Perhaps 'tis well you know It now 
While not a furrow marks your brow, 
While Youth's red wine is sipped by you 
And all is fresh and good and true ; 
Your face has yet its boyhood's bloom, 
Your laughter holds no hint of doom, 
Your lithe young body, graceful, strong, 
Is beautiful as a line of song; 
Vigorous, clean, and quick, you find 
Life is a joy but half defined, 
And every act and every way 
Brings a new glory to your day. 
Some sorrow you have known, for which 

[223] 



TO A YOUNG POET 

Your joy Is something doubly rich, 

And friendships' hours have proved to you 

That flesh and blood are things more true, 

More precious than the songs you sing. 

For to your eyes they sometimes bring 

A great and summer-smitten calm 

That to the aching heart Is balm. 

" And even yet light laughter lies 

Slumbering In your magic eyes, 

Eyes with a deep, soft, liquid light 

Like the deep moonlit pools of night. 

Though sometimes when your thought takes fire 

Those eyes seem all a wild desire 

Burning with bright Intensity 

Out of the soul's Immensity. 

" Sunshine you catch within your smile 
And hold Its radiance for a while. 
But fitful as an April day 
You change, grow silent, draw away; 
A poet, subtle as your songs, 
A magic to your speech belongs 
For you can play on human chords 
With all the passion youth affords, 

[224] 



TO A YOUNG POET 

Until your thoughts move quick and bright 

As summer lightning in the night. 

A flower, — a rose, a buttercup — 

Your eyes will drink its beauty up; 

A face, a song, that seems divine. 

You mould It in a rhythmic line: 

You burn with zeal to lock the rose 

Within a tomb of fragrant prose, 

A dream of beauty are the stars 

Glimmering through the deodars; 

At midnight on the wooded hill 

Voices you hear, though all is still. 

And In the ecstasy of Youth 

You vow with Keats that Beauty's Truth. 

" And yet, young friend, the old are wise, 
Regard a while the change that lies 
Along the pathway of the years 
That you must traverse — sighs and tears. 
The end of youth's fine healthy glow, 
The zeal with which you overflow. 
Gone is the glory of your face. 
With it your body's fawn-like grace. 
Ah, more — the thread of lively thought 
That held your friends and made you sought 

[225] 



TO A YOUNG POET 

And led you to a throne of glory, 

Breaks now your head Is aged and hoary; 

Your listeners all are crept away, 

Many to sleep, a few to pray — 

Silent the audience chamber now 

Where sits Old Age with wrinkled brow. 

'' Young friend," I said, " fear not the glass, 
For never joys will come to pass 
When all the witty things are said 
And fever in the blood is dead; 
A perfect calm, the heart at ease 
Wearied no more with need to please, 
The genial gentleness that sheds 
A benign grace on silvery heads. 
The ripened thought, the sweetened soul 
That has all life In its control. 
That lauds the aim, and not the end, 
Knowing how failure may befriend. 
The eyes that see the border line, 
The hand that feels a grasp divine. 
The twilight calm, and the last sleep 
That like a tide runs to the deep — 
Young friend," I said, " all's well! these things 
Are Life's best gifts which old age brings." 

[226] 



THE PORTRAIT 

THERE Is a gift, friend, in your hand; here's 
proof 
That just so many eyes that gaze will see, 
Though never one finds what the other finds 
Or reads Into the face portrayed the same 
Interpretation; Daniel's mystic wall 
Had troubled less these readers of the soul 
Who mount your stairs, tap on your studio door 
And taking chair, are seated leg o'er leg. 
Lean back, and with the zest of ignorance 
Pronounce the verdict, praise you, Raphael-like, 
Or, with a deference masking self-conceit. 
Drawl out their smug suggestions — " on the 

cheek 
Is not the shadow — well — perhaps not; — but 
Yet 'tis a layman's fancy! — still . . . per- 
haps . . ." 
And so they leave you striving with faint doubts 
When all had seemed so clear and true; and now 
You hesitate, when, " Rap! " — the studio door 

[227] 



THE PORTRAIT 

Opens to show your second visitor 

Who, greeting given, straightway takes his stand 

Fronting the easel, silent; on the roof 

The rain falls musically where the glass 

Is washed of grime from office chimney-pots 

Guarding your seven-story studio. 

And now the second verdict. " Yes . . . the 

face 
Is perfect, wonderfully true — but is 
The brow so broad — yes? Somehow . . . 

well of course. 
The artist, he should know indeed " — then goes 
The second critic down the stairs, and you 
Begin to doubt your gift when — " Rap ! " — the 

third ! 
Oh! but you are a man of Christian spirit! 
Suffering the fool so gladly that he thinks 
His thin, diluted wisdom v/arms your soul 
And helps you to that effort which shall raise 
Your name and fee beyond provincial cavil; 
And the third critic, smoking your cigarette. 
Makes judgment with the spice of wit, dilates 
Upon the happy touches, those sure tricks 
Which make the portrait lifelike, and you smile 

[228] 



THE PORTRAIT 

To hear your genius classed with conjuring — 
Dexterity of hand combined, with eye. 
Then down goes critic three, while you remain 
To clean your brushes, thinking all the time 
That Art is but a jade — to flirt with, yes. 
But marry — if you dare ! 

Meanwhile, I pray, 
Allow me audience — the portrait's source, 
The flesh and blood, — of me what thought your 

critics? 
Am I not wronged, or Is the Samson-sight 
Too blind to note the Philistine in me ! 
Take critic one, and learn his view; he comes, 
For all his twelve stone, blithely up the steps, 
Flushed with good health, a man of easy life 
Who finds his natural appetites appeased 
As soon as thought gives action to desire. 
He laughs, is never melancholy, lives 
As though the world were ordered to his taste, 
With flat in town, a maisonnette In Paris, 
Bungalow on the river, and a place 
Girt with ancestral towers, 'mid a park 
Noisy with rooks; and so he lives his life, 
Through days of free disposal. Labour, want, 

[229] 



THE PORTRAIT 

Disease, despair, — such things exist, he knows, 

But are as discord in a distant room, 

Walled up, too far removed to be disturbing; 

And as his life, so his philosophy, 

And as this latter, so his view-point too 

When judging this our portrait; hear his words — 

^' An interesting-looking face, some day 

Bring him to tea, but why so sad, no youth 

Should look so miserable, though these poets 

Find pleasure in their pain. They say his books. 

Which I have never read, show deepest thought — 

Somehov/ I never could read poetry 

Or I would borrow them and read myself — 

Surely he looks more cheerful in real life 

Or is it just a trick you artists have 

To hint at sorrow In the eyes, to lend 

A wistful spirit to the face? I heard 

My cousin speak of him the other day, 

He swore he never met so gay a wit, 

Such sparkling high vivacity before. 

And he has travelled much, knows Paris well, 

Which Is the home of talkers, but this boy 

Impressed him, evidently poor, he thought 

Had travelled little, longed for Italy — 

[230] 



THE PORTRAIT 

Singular that, you know, I lived there once 
For quite three years — a hot and weary place 
Where galleries innumerable hold 
Insipid faces by ' Fra this,' ' Fra that ' . . . 
A glorified museum with broken limbs, 
Chipped torsos, Venuses galore, Madonnas 
Gathered by thousands in long galleries. 
It is a strange face this. In many ways — 
Look at the mouth, somewhat effeminate 
With its twIn-cupId bows, and those slight curves 
Turned inward at the corners, not the face 
Of one who battles much, a dreamer's rather 
Who feels resentment 'gainst a world whose rules 
Enforce the need of conflict — those strange eyes 
Can blaze at times, I think, and sulk as well, 
Not quite a pleasant character, all told — 
Disposed to rage against the powers that be, 
Too much inclined to point the fault, to brood, 
Contemning life not ordered to his taste; 
The hair shows that, its very manner speaks 
Defiance in the face of common facts — 
He struggled bitterly, you say? One sees 
The traces in the mouth, a cynic sneer 
Lurks there for the unfortunate who dares 

[231] 



THE PORTRAIT 

Appraise too glibly, speculate on life 

With cheerful faith, and bank-book optimism; 

And what conceit ! — a thing I much admire 

If not too much in evidence. You smile, 

I see, and think I do him wrong, indeed 

It may be so, I do not know the man 

But if the fairy godmothers at birth 

Were parsimonious, they gave me this — 

The gift to read a face ! " 

So critic one 
Judges the portrait, and the portrait's source. 
Then starts to find how time has flown, jumps up 
And hurries to a club lunch where the Major 
Waits friendly help to damn the Government. 

Well, and the portrait judged, what satisfaction 
Have you or I, for som.e one lies — your hand, 
My face, or critic one — God knows in truth 
I am no person such as lie discerned. 
And so — the critic lies, If not — the portrait, 
Who shall appoint the blame ? Why ! critic two 1 
Listen, he climbs the stone steps, not a man 
Inclined to hurried action, regular feet 
Are these, bespeaking calm, deliberation; 
The frosted panels of your studio door 

[232] 



THE PORTRAIT 

Reflect his shadowy silhouette a space 

Before the knuckle whitens on the glass. 

He greets you with an air not grown perfunctory, 

And takes the chair you offer, then unwinds 

The muffler at his throat, unbuttons, spreads 

His hands revealing thin white fingers, frail 

As any nun's held up in act of prayer. 

We like this man, as much as one can like 

The acquiescent temperament and face 

That smiles on good and evil, nay, denies 

Such thing miscalled, for " error " is its name 

Smilingly he will tell you, with a grace 

Which only childlike Innocence could maintain. 

His bearing, like a tree In summer state 

Soft-singing to the tender breeze which plays 

Amid the leaves whispering In alarm, 

Is deferential yet withal is strong; 

Oppose him, he will smile, give way so far 

And with a fine resilience swing back, 

As the tall elm that from the raging storm 

Released, asserts its former majesty. 

He will not understand your tale of woe, — 

All outward things are ruled by inner thought, 

Control that force the world is yours to shape, 

[233] 



THE PORTRAIT 

He tells you; all the while stark poverty, 
Ugliness, disease and crime confront him 
And yet he cannot, or he will not see them, 
For seeing would corrupt the thought; and so 
The portrait finds no critic of its flaws. 
But one whose task is to assess, reveal, 
Dilate upon its qualities, and make 
Careful deductions full of kindly thought; 
But first there will be silence — then — 

*' Well done ! — 
This Is most delicate, as soft as bloom 
Blurring the peach, and those deep lustrous eyes 
Are lucid as the dew on pansy petals — 
Light backed with velvet darkness ; what a touch, 
A happy touch that shadov/ on the temple; 
This face seems all alive with thought, and sweet 
Ingenuous emotion — not of one 
Who ever let a base desire corrupt 
The soul, but pure, of infant innocence. 
Reflected in his poems. Have you read 
Those tender little lyrics that he wrote 
In — what's the title of the last book out? — 
Well, here's the source of all their wistfulness, 
Their grace and soft tranquillity, akin 

[234] 



THE PORTRAIT 

With moonlight and a wide and starry sky. 
Though I have heard things, this face looks on joy 
More often than on sorrow, what you say 
I know Is true — these Ills of life distract 
A mind so sensitive, but what are they 
To one with soul so dominant; the head 
Reveals the thinker throned above the jars 
And frets of life walled In by petty cares. 
You triumph In this portrait, having found 
The spirit underneath the flesh, the part 
Most perdurable, for the whole thing shows 
The living soul beneath the outward guise. 
This Is no worldlng-face, no passion here 
But peace unbounded like an arctic plain 
Of wide, immortal and untrodden snows. 
You have been faithful — and the mortal man 
Marked with the storm you have not shown, in- 
deed 
This Is no portrait In a sense which deems 
Resemblance to its subject the first rule, 
Many will see no verisimilitude, 
But what of that? — ' the Soul,' Art cries, * show 

that!' 
And you have shown it! " 

[235] 



THE PORTRAIT 

Thus spake critic two 
And when he went, with gentle smile, and firm 
Warm pressure of your hand, what thought you 

then? 
Strangely confused you were, I think, for how 
Could the artistic temperament derive 
Pleasure from praise that so neglected art? 
"No verisimilitude! " he said, the words 
Are censure in one form, the eye and hand 
Have failed in their first office to portray 
The subject of the portrait; life-like? "No!" 
Our friend says, and you chafe, the compliment 
Was doubtful. Ah, my friend, you must resolve 
What is the true criterion of Art, — 
To show the living man, that all cry out 
At first glance, " 'Tis the poet, you remember. 
He lectured last month at the Assembly rooms! " 
Or prove the connoisseur — philosopher — 
Reveal the soul, the animating spirit, 
Neglecting the resemblances of flesh? 
Perhaps the best way beyond all contention 
Is that combining truth with introspection — 
Give likeness both to life and soul at once? 
Which, think I, you have done, friend. Do not 

doubt 

[236] 



THE PORTRAIT 

The artist knows his own creation best, 

As any mother at a glance detects 

Her own child at a creche where strangers' eyes 

See infants all alike, all featureless I 

We live in fear of misconception, friend. 

And yet all great work must precede the age 

Capable of its recognition; take 

Galileo for instance, when he dared, 

Infidel preposterous, to assert 

The Earth moved round the Sun, confounding 

God, 
And all the prophets — then a war of theories, 
Ptolemaic 'gainst the Copernlcan, 
Pope, Church and Inquisition, bulls, decrees 
And recantation under torture; truth 
Has always suffered crucifixion, friend! 
But we progress, withal, none now to laugh 
Poor blind Galileo to scorn! ah, you. 
We, artists all, walk lonely in our way. 

The critics one and two gave little help. 
Both saw the portrait, each misjudged in part 
'Model no less than artist; now, once more, 
Hear critic three, a lady this who calls, 
A person of bon ton — and titled too ! 

[237] 



THE PORTRAIT 

Who has not seen and worshipped Lady Jane? — 

Since that first day Sir Roland brought her home 

To famishing estate and crumbling grange, 

The relics of a past magnificence; 

She came, and in a throng of parvenus, 

Brewers and druggists, merchants one remove 

From small shop vendors — no disgrace appends 

To low beginnings, rather credit, save 

The ladder is not scorned and kicked away 

And knighthood purchased as a gilt for dross — 

'Mid such a throng she moves, outdazzled quite, 

Like a small diamond in a world of paste, 

But known and valued truly all the same. 

Yet diamonds have their flaws, and she, in truth, 

No less reveals defects of quality. 

These charity parades, these matinees — 

My lady in her box Is billed no less 

Than famous actress — patron one, the other 

Performer, yet both seek the public gaze. 

Both qualified by merit to appeal, 

The one by gifts, the other by her birth. 

Is It not strange, friend, how Duke this. Lord that 

Are personages just because a crowd 

Will flock to stare at them; suppose my Lord, 

[238] 



THE PORTRAIT 

Billed as a patron, takes his box and sits 
In public view — and no one comes to view, 
Who is my lord then ? — sad to think, a mere 
Useful or useless man, no more, no less — 
The patent of nobility's the crowd ! 

My Lady Jane knows thi's, reveals herself, 

Speaks, patronises just enough to whet 

The common curiosity, no more — 

Then holds aloof, position thus acknowledged. 

I am not kind to speak her faults, but there. 

So much we all know, and that known, the rest 

Is testimony to her tender heart, 

Sweet face and eyes, and ears for pity's call. 

Now let her judge the portrait. Pause awhile, 

Those seven-storey stairs take all the breath. 

" So you have finished it! I like the pose, 

There is a regal calm about that brow, 

Sloping to shadow, and the eyes are good. 

But do you know, I think there is a want 

Of wistfulness? — those eyes are laughing now. 

They may be true to life. From all I hear 

This poet shares the madness of his race 

Which half excuses his wild escapades — 

You did not know . . . ? — you modern Stylites, 

[239] 



THE PORTRAIT 

Brick-pillared in the clouds, seven-storey high, 

Art checks all converse with your fellow-men I — 

Forgive me, I should not have mentioned this. 

Maybe ill-natured gossip takes his name 

As a distaff to wrap its scandal round, 

But those eyes look the part, I must admit. 

This portrait fascinates me, first, because 

It is a work of art, and secondly 

One now can study every line and read 

The truth of this strange face. I saw him once 

At an At Home — he read a poem there. 

And as he syllabled the words, it seemed 

As if a music fell upon our ears, 

Not speech, nor sound alone, nor wholly sense 

But joy and sorrow, peace and pain, all these — 

A spirit that made silence eloquent 

With dim rich memories, and gave to words 

A music that with healing sought our ears, 

Entered our hearts, and ran through all the veins. 

We sat entranced and wondered at ourselves, 

Tried to resolve identity, to find 

What all this life meant — for a space, and then 

This necromancer broke his spell of words. 

Laughed at us for our folly, and withdrew, 

[240] 



THE PORTRAIT 

Tea-cup in hand, to enjoy our adoration. 

He has no modesty, he rates himself 

Among the gods of song, and takes his place 

With cool assurance 'mid the greatest names, 

And yet, strange paradox, If you speak praise 

With genuine feeling, he will smile at you 

As though he thought you mocked him. You 

have caught 
Some of this insolence in the whole pose — 
The chin advanced defiant, and the mouth 
Too delicate, I think, compressed to show 
Half-veiled contempt for people of this world. 
It is a true and charming piece of work. 
You have revealed the man behind the pose." 

Judgment delivered. Lady Jane has gone, 
Now are you satisfied? No? nor am I ! 
Oh artist friend of mine, we well deserve 
The punishment incomprehension brings 
For asking judgment of a world so blind. 
Three critics, and three verdicts ! Ask no fourth, 
For truth is not in numbers; who would think 
So many portraits, each one different. 
Three pairs of eyes could conjure from one 
frame ; 

[241] 



THE PORTRAIT 

And yet the portrait does not lie, no fault 

Is yours, my friend; the work is true and good — 

Remember that the model suffers too ! 

What am I, dreamer, hypochondriac, 

True-souled revealer of the heavenly things 

By virtue of a childish innocence, 

Gay mocker, with a cynic-sneer, or what — 

Posturing fool that apes the mighty man? 

Three critics saw three portraits, but their words 

Spoke of a dozen men, and never me ! 

Here is excuse to diagnose myself 
And play the egotist that Lady Jane 
Avers I am — but for a while I stand 
Behind the portrait, let it speak for me; 
What does it say for its original? 
Has Art revealed in subtle shade and line 
The underplay of nerves, emotion, thought 
Which makes expression, and presents the face 
Stamped o'er with vice or virtue for the world 
To read at sight? Ah, friend, your task is hard. 
For words, light-spoken words, die with the breath 
That brought them forth, but all your work re- 
mains 

[242] 



THE PORTRAIT 

A witness how you spoke — this line, this shade 

Will tell their story, and the judgment holds 

If your hand gossiped while it drew, allowed 

The scandal in its curve to damn the face; 

The lie remains, for whoso sees will read 

Not truth, but your translation from the flesh. 

Your task Is hard. Indeed; three critics saw 

A portrait, which Is mine; the fourth, the artist. 

Drew it, — you are a critic just as they, 

Drawing to judgment of the eye ; and now 

Speaks critic five — the true original. 

And I am most perplexed. Four critics saw 

Four characters within one face — the fifth 

Is no less sure to fall, let me confess; 

Much wisdom came from Greece — one proverb 

said, 
*' Man, know thyself!" — the comprehensive 

sage 
Found Truth's dilemma when he uttered that, 
For what we are none knows, nor ever will — 
Birth, Death, Soul, Mind, Thought — embryonic 

words, 
Metaphors of a truth beyond our ken: 
Wherefore, how often must we fail in sight 

[243] 



THE PORTRAIT 

Both to perceive and to record the truth 

Through mists of prejudice, and colourings 

Of temperament; each setting of the sun 

Records its daily self not twice alike. 

Here, then, the secret of our portrait, friend, 

You saw and made it as you saw, your truth 

May differ in the eyes of critic one 

As his in those of critic two and three, 

And yet you have not failed but triumphed — this 

I know and feel, now, as with face to face 

I read my features through your eyes, attain 

The broader view from vantage ground of yours; 

Thus you fulfil your office, with your hand 

Make mirrors for mankind to see itself. 



THE END 



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